


leave the bluest skies for boys to burn

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Character Study, M/M, Minor Character Death, Psychic Lion Bonds, Slow Build, Strained Communication, long distance, sad gays in space who care too much about each other, season 4 fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 21:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: If it were up to Lance, all of this started the moment Keith left Voltron. Unfortunately for Lance, that’s an easy way out and he doesn’t own the power to claim what causes a string of shitty upon shittier events, so it's impossible to say for sure._Long distance is especially tricky in the middle of an intergalactic space war. Lance and Keith work it out anyway.





	leave the bluest skies for boys to burn

**Author's Note:**

> OH MAN! I AM SO GLAD TO HAVE THIS FIC OUT NOW! This is the longest fic I've ever worked on and I just wanted to send it out into the world now. I wasn't satisfied with Lance or Keith's arc in season 4, so I decided to rewrite their arcs in a way that's more satisfying to me.
> 
> HUGE shoutout to Seb, who encouraged me to finish and to write this, and who beta'd my fic and gave me the confidence I needed to post it. I love you and none of this would even be here without you. ♡
> 
> Skip to the end for spoilers/warnings.

If it were up to Lance, all of this started the moment Keith left Voltron. Unfortunately for Lance, that’s an easy way out and he doesn’t own the power to claim what causes a string of shitty upon shittier events, so it's impossible to say for sure. 

Maybe he should elaborate. 

Here’s the thing about a missing person: it always comes at you when you’re feeling comfortable. It’s like walking through your house at night, walking the same hallways you’ve walked hundreds of times, having the layout perfectly engrained in your mind, and tripping over something you forgot you placed.

With Voltron, it’s difficult to think about anything besides the missions at hand. The moment one is finished, another mission pops up, or a diplomacy meeting needs to be underway, or a show to gather more forces is already talked about being scheduled. Sometimes Lance is too drained to think about anything besides Voltron, something he’s grateful for when creeping dark thoughts or his homesickness symptoms flair up. His brain keeping busy has been the best way of dealing with the negatives of intergalactic heroism

Except like all things, there are always lulls. Night happens to be the moment when everything kept at bay during the day comes rushing back with a vengeance.

Lance does one of three things: he stares body exhausted, mind awake at the ceiling convincing himself to fall asleep again, or he sneaks into the newly renovated game room as Hunk deemed it, or he walks around the Castle aimlessly until he finds the observation deck. Sleep comes eventually, but never as quick as Lance wants it to. So he picks whatever method feels right at the time and goes for it until his brain reaches how exhausted his body is.

Tonight’s option three. The Castle always seems to be more ominous at night, where the artificial lights are dimmed and the only sound is the soft hum of the Castle’s mechanisms and Lance’s feet scuffling across the pristine floor. Being alone in the Castle halls isn’t as unnerving as it was before, but Lance won’t lie when he thinks he’d rather have someone else awake with him right now. Sometimes when he wanders like this, he’d run into Keith walking back from the training room or the kitchen with a bowl of goo in hand, and Lance would end up joining him to keep himself company.

A part of him thinks if he turns the corner, he might see Keith there. All he ever sees is empty space and a disappointing reminder that Keith’s  _gone._

So, it’s more or less a tiny bit of a shock when Lance hears his voice coming from the control room.

“Voltron, come in. I have information on the briefing from the mission,” Keith’s voice comes through, sounding nearly artificial over the video communicator but still inarguably  _Keith’s voice_. “ _Ugh_ , I  _told_  Kolivan that this was a bad time to call—“

“Keith?” Lance asks once he steps into the control room, watching the way Keith’s eyes find his when he comes into the focus of the camera, widening a moment before returning back to an almost dead stare. “Uh, hey, man. What’s going on?”

“Kolivan wanted me to inform Voltron about the information we gathered when on our intelligence mission,” Keith says, short and brief and to the point. “You can tell this to Shiro or Allura, right?”

Maybe it’s because Lance hasn’t seen him in a few days now, but he can’t help but look over his face and realize it hits Lance how  _different_  Keith looks. How hunched over he is, how Lance can outline of his shoulders from how tense he holds himself. 

The last image Lance had of him in his mind was of a smiling Keith, happiness reaching his eyes and flowing through every part of him. Now, Keith looks as if every part of life has been drained from his body, his eyes red and puffy— almost as if he had been  _crying_. Although the mere thought of Keith crying leaves a nauseous kick in his stomach. It’s wrong, like a family album filled with pictures of people you never met, like a boy crying in a place impossible to reach, like missing the rain when you’re in outer space.

Something happened to him. This isn’t the same Keith as the one who left. Or maybe it is and he’s good at hiding it, and that terrifies Lance the most, that he might not even know Keith as well as he thinks.

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith snaps, voice tinged in annoying and simultaneously bringing Lance back to attention. “Did you hear me?”

“What? Oh yeah, man. Loud and clear,” Lance replies back, typing in the coordinates of the Castle Ship to Keith’s signal to create a secure connection so Keith can send over the Intel. It’s something the Blade of Marmora has been particularly strict about in order to maintain their secrecy and location confidential. Which, as understandable as it is, still frustrates Lance to no end. A ding rings through the air shortly after. “There, now you can send it over with no worries, no Galra interception.  _You’re welcome_.”

Keith pauses briefly, before looking over at Lance with an unreadable expression. “Thanks, Lance,” he says, voice a touch softer than it had been earlier. There’s a brief lull of silence, Keith glancing at something Lance can’t see with Lance staring at Keith. “I should get going.”

“Already?” Lance asks despite himself. “Not even a  _‘Hey Lance, how are you doing? What’s going on with you? Let me tell you about this cool mission while I patiently wait for you to one-up and own me with one of your own’?_  Seriously?”

Keith, the asshole, has the audacity to laugh at. Although Lance does enjoy the sound of Keith laughing and enjoying himself over the frustration and withdrawn energy he had only moments before. “You’re telling me you want to talk about what our days together or something?”

“Well maybe not so much now you’re laughing at me,” Lance remarks back, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his nose up towards the camera. “And you don’t even  _wan_ t to apparently.”

“Lance,” Keith sighs, the sound of it making Lance’s stomach twist uncomfortably, “You’re assuming.”

“Maybe you’re not assuming enough.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Right,” Lance says.

There’s a brief uncomfortable pause after. Maybe it’s the effect the night has, or the fact it’s only two of them in the room, but the energy shifts as if they made a wrong turn and found themselves in a place they know nothing about.

Keith brings a hand to rub at his eyes tiredly with the edge of his hand, sighing into the camera. Looking more tired than Lance has ever seen him, except maybe when he was formerly leading, Keith merely asks, “Are you mad at me?”

“Kind of hard to be mad at someone who doesn’t even bother saying anything to you in the first place,” Lance says. He focuses his attention on his sleeve instead of Keith’s narrowed eyes at him.

Lance’s fingers twitch against his jacket— too aware of Keith’s eyes on him. Keith alone can manage to change the feeling of a room without ever needing to be here.

With another deep sigh, Keith merely says, “I said goodbye.”

“Like that’s supposed to make it any better?”

“Yes!” Keith’s fingers pinch the middle of his brow. The vein in his temple slightly prominent. “I thought I was doing the right thing that way.”

And somehow, those words cut into him more than any obliviousness or air headedness Keith had held onto before. Part of Lance had hoped maybe there was some greater reason as to why Keith had pulled away from Lance, didn’t bother mentioning the plan to him before he up and left onto this grand Blade of Marmora padawan training.

Harsh realities always leave one hell of a sting, and this one’s no different. Despite everything happened to the two of them, no matter how much Lance had been there for him, despite opening himself up to Keith and sharing one of his vulnerabilities/insecurities, Keith didn’t want it. Lance didn’t deserve a personal goodbye, or a talk away from the others. What he’d got was good enough for Keith, if it wasn’t what Lance had wanted.

Fact is, Lance doesn’t know what he wanted from Keith. All he knows is last goodbye hadn’t been enough.

“I thought you  _wanted_  me to go,” Keith replies back. “You waved me off with everyone else.”

“How do you even know what I wanted?” Lance asks. He wants to stop himself, but he can’t control the words ready to leave his mouth anymore than he can control the thoughts springing up without his permission. “You didn’t give anyone a  _chance_  to talk about it with you. I thought you would’ve at least told me—”

Lance stops himself before he can finish with something’d leave him hung out on the open, all for Keith to see. No doubt in his mind t he wants to tell Keith something more than this, but the knowledge is: he doesn’t know if Keith will take this chance to open back up.

Furrowing his brows over the screen, Keith’s mouth forms into a straight line. His eyes are intense; searching for something in Lance’s face he’s not sure exists. “Told you what, Lance?”

Lance parts his lips to answer, but any words are cut off by the blaring alarm sounds. Red drowns the room in increments, the computers highlighting the red glare and discoloring Keith’s face. Every muscle in his body tenses; ready to strike, as if he’s forgotten he’s not on the same ship anymore.

“What’s going on, Lance?” Keith demands.

“I’m not sure,” Lance answers honestly. “Galra ship, I think. I need to go — everyone’s already probably heading to their lions already.”

“Go,” Keith urges. “We’ll talk later.”

Lance nods, barely listening to him, not believing for a moment they will. Every nerve in his body is alight, blinking off the signal to run. His fingers hover over the controls ready to end, before Keith’s voice cuts in, taking Lance’s whole attention.

“And Lance?”

Here’s the thing about hope: Lance never learns.

“Yeah?”

“Be careful with Red.”

Nodding once, Lance ends the transmission before he can let himself think about Keith, and anything he said in the meantime. For now at least.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

“ _Stupid Keith_ ,” Lance mutters under his breath. Every muscle feels tense, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and shoulders hunched, already beginning to feel the ache come. It’s better than whining about it though.

“You’re acting like he’s gone forever,” Pidge says. It’s hard to believe her calm demeanor when her eyes and nose are still a matching red, her cheeks only now finally drying. “Keith’s probably gonna get mission solved in two weeks tops. Then he’ll be back and can finally take some of the embarrassment from these performances off our backs.” She folds her hands together, presses them against her mouth. “It’s not fair he got out of all of it.”

“Lance, man, do you know why he decided to up and leave?” Hunk asks from across the couch they’re all splayed on. “I mean, I know he said it was because he felt like he wanted to do more, but…”

Lance raises a brow. “Why would _I_  know that?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Pidge asks.

“I mean, both of you have been spending a lot more time together since Shiro disappeared and  _after_  Shiro came back too,” Hunk explains as if Lance wasn’t present through all of it. There’s look to his eye Lance either loves or hates, the one where Hunk’s been analyzing a situation to make sense of it. Typical engineer brain. Lance hates when look is used on him. “It sort of felt like there had to be more to it than feeling like he’d do better with the Blade. Like he wasn’t telling us everything.”

“Yeah. I knew Keith wasn’t showing up for Voltron stuff more and more, but I didn’t really expect him to just up and  _leave_.” Pidge huffs. “Does he maybe like being with the Blade of Marmora more then?”

And, well. Lance doesn’t have an answer for them. None of these answers make sense for either of them, because Keith never considered talking about  _anything_  with Lance. Lance was like anybody else when it came to Keith recently, because just like everyone else, Lance had seenKeith less and less as the days went by.

Which, well, Lance didn’t exactly know how he felt about.

“I don’t know what to tell you guys,” Lance shrugs, shoulders hunched and arms crossed. There’s no answer he could give them which would be true, or would settle the question raging through everyone’s minds. “Keith’s gone, we’re out of luck for our Voltron shows, and everything’s a disaster.”

“Right, everything’s a disaster because of the Voltron shows,” Pidge deadpans, voice as dry as her face now, “Not because of anything else.”

Whatever the reason, Hunk and Pidge continue to look at him for a few seconds too long before Lance splays across the couch and turns his head so he’s pressed face-first against the back of the couch. He’s not sure how long it takes before he drifts off from Hunk and Pidge talking about something only resembles garbled speech to him, as heaviness and exhaustion from the mission overcomes him. All that’s on his mind is Keith, why he felt like he was only revealing so much, the fact he’d been pulling away more and more before he’d up and left. 

It’s not something he should focus on, especially if Keith doesn’t feel the need to focus on them.

But he can’t stop his brain from wandering. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

Much to Lance’s surprise, Keith fulfills his promise on talking later. Not that Lance doubts Keith’s word or anything, but Keith always has a way of surprising him.

Lance reaches over the control panel to answer, but his fingers hover over the transmission by some invisible thread. A part of him wonders if he should call Shiro or Allura, or literally anyone else other than him to answer, but as soon as the thought crosses his mind he knows it’s stupid. Why should Lance be the one to avoid Keith when he literally walked away from everyone else? It should be Keith feeling the swirling anxiety in the pit of his stomach from the thought of seeing him, the bubbling frustration in the pit of his stomach from hearing what he’d have to say.

It’s not like Lance asked for this uncomfortable ache in the pit of his chest whenever he so much as thought of Keith’s name. Keith shouldn’t be the one who gets off scott free like he didn’t leave Lance – and everyone else – behind in the dirt.

All it takes to accept the transmission is a simple click of the button, and immediately Keith’s face flashes pops up on the screen. He’s still wearing the Blade of Marmora uniform, but his face is free now of the grime and sweat and distant far-away look in his eye. He looks familiar in a way that Lance is beginning to realize he prefers.

“Lance,” Keith breathes out. It almost sounds like relief, if it wasn’t for the fact Keith can’t exactly look him in the eyes for longer than a few seconds. “I didn’t know if anyone was going to pick up.”

“Well it  _is_  kinda late,” Lance replies, more sharp than he means to. Usually Lance is one to set the tone of the conversation more often than not, but this awkwardness is uncomfortable in a way that has Lance floundering for something stable to talk about. “Should I get everyone?” He scans Keith’s face, searches for any signs that whatever Keith’s calling for is life- or galaxy-threatening. “Did something happen?”

Keith’s eyes widen. “You don’t need to call anyone over,” he blurts out, and he’d almost look ridiculous if Keith wasn’t as naturally endearing as he is. “Everything’s fine. At least on our end.” Keith rubs his temple, shoulders hunched forward as if weighed down by something. Keith being awkward sometimes or not knowing context seems to happen sometimes naturally in conversation, but this isn’t Keith’s normal level of weird. Something’s up.

“Okay,” Lance drawls out, eyeing Keith with a more intense urge of suspicion. “So you’re calling to have a random check-up session with me then? That’s really sweet, Keith. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

“ _Lance_.” To anyone else, Keith using tone of voice and narrowing his eyes would have set anyone else off from any further teasing. Except Lance knows the subtle way his eyes widen means he’s been caught. “It’s not like I don’t want to talk to the others right now.”

“Uh-huh.” Lance nods. “Of course not.”

Rolling his eyes, Keith sinks in his chair a little further. “ _Why_  do you make everything so hard?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance replies. He crosses his arms over his chest, and for a moment Lance is transported to a pathetic preschool fight about who was the better animal, sharks or pandas.

( _Sharks, obviously_.)

With a huff, Keith says, “Our last conversation felt weird.” If there was anyone on this ship besides Lance who’d dive for the heart of a problem and grasp it with no mercy, it’s Keith. Easy for Lance to forget a fact like until Keith shoves it right back in his face. “Are you going to tell me what your problem is or are you going to keep acting like a baby about this?”

“You,” Lance answers, with a rather grand emphasis on the childish edge in his voice. “You’re my problem.”

“ _Why?_ ”

It’s not like Lance can exactly blurt out that he’s hurt with everything that’s happened in the last few days. He can’t explain the strange intermingling of guilt and sadness following after everything he does like a shadow. Lance can’t determine why all of this is bothering him as much as it, let alone make an attempt to explain it to Keith.

Lance taps his fingers along the expanse of the control board before him, desperately trying to focus on anything besides the intense stare of Keith’s eyes on him. It bleeds into him like a beam of light, focusing on the tiniest details of him. “I thought we were friends,” Lance says carefully, hand-picking every word to not give away more than Keith needs.

Keith blinks in surprise, before his brows settle to a slight furrow. “We are friends,” says Keith slowly. “I don’t think I’m understanding.”

Taking a slow inhale through his nose, Lance steels himself to ask: “Why didn’t you talk to me before you left?”

“What?” Keith asks. “I didn’t get a chance to leave. It was a last minute thing. You were there.”

“It wasn’t last minute, Keith,” Lance replies. “It was impulsive, but you were leaving for a while. Weren’t you?”

Keith stills. If it weren't for Lance catching the rise and fall of his chest, Lance wouldn't have been wrong to assume the screen had frozen over— transmission interrupted. They both stare at each other with a look in each other’s eyes. No matter what Keith says, they both know Lance is right.

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty or anything,” Lance adds after a beat too long of silence. Keith tears his gaze away from Lance, but Lance doesn’t stop looking at him, drinking him in even as twisted concern strains every inch of his nerves. “I just… I wanted to understand.” The words feel like lead dripping off his tongue. “How one minute we were actually talking to each other and then  _poof_. A whole load of nothing.”

Keith is quiet for a moment, until he finally looks back at Lance. “I didn’t know you thought that way.”

“You never asked.” Lance drops his gaze, fiddling with his sleeve.

“Then,” Keith visibly swallows, “let me ask something.”

Lance snorts and sits back. “There’s no way I can stop you. Shoot, my man.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “If I keep you updated on stuff, will make you feel better?”

“Well don’t do it on my account.”

“I  _want_  to do it, you ass.”

And there it is again, hope lurching in Lance’s chest. He plays it cool, steel blue. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

Keith’s smile cuts through the tension in Lance’s shoulders that he didn’t know he’d been carrying. 

“I’d say it wouldn’t even make the list.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Missions coming to a halt left two problems in its wake: boredom and Lance hoping for anything to  _ignore_  said boredom.

Recruiting members for the Voltron coalition and providing relief and support leaves plenty of thinking time Lance would rather  _not_  have. It wasn’t like Lance didn’t make an attempt to fix the situation or anything, but watching Pidge decode an old Altean processing system, or Hunk and Coran analyze the engines, or Allura and Shiro train at level seventeen on the Gladiator where Lance hasn’t reached level eight yet tends to lose its touch after a while.

So Lance had taken it upon himself to do his  _own_  thing. One that didn’t revolve around waiting for Keith to call, because he’s anything but someone who waits around for someone who has a life, or hovering around his friends while they work on their interests, but something Lance knew he needed to work on: strengthening the shaky bond he has with Red.

Lance hasn’t been able to stop himself from thinking about their last battle. It occasionally brushes along his mind when he dozes off, creeping up on him, like a feeling he’d left the stove on after he’s already left the house. The strange impulses, the fact Red’s demeanor had twisted so drastically at the mere mention of Keith— urgent, red alarms going off, though Lance doesn’t know what trips it off.

Red’s nothing like Blue. Physical stats and weapons aside, personality wise, the two couldn’t be more opposite; Blue who’s as friendly as she is communicative, transmitting images into his head like a movie, details crisp and the message easy to swallow down in the long run; Red who’s the epitome of a wet blanket. It doesn’t matter how many times Lance can poke or prod or beg for some form of an answer, Red only meets him less than half of the way with a  _growl_  or the sense of glaring Lance  _down_.

Maybe his theory about the Red lion wanting to chew him up for breakfast and cough him up later had some merit. But hey, Lance is anything  _but_ a quitter.

“Ready for some quality bonding time, Red?” Lance asks, sitting in his pilot’s chair, arranging his body to look as relaxed and as easy as he wished it actually were. A minute of silence passes before his eyes narrow. “Even  _with_  your disrespectful and uncooperative attitude, I’m gonna give it my all anyway. Better be ready for, hot stuff.”

The thing about robot lions is no matter how much you force a bond, they’re only going to let you see things when you’re ready for them. Sometimes Red feels strange to him, off. Their connection comes and goes in waves, but he knows they’re getting stronger together than apart, but it always feels like Lance is one step behind. Always somewhere outside of reach.

And then, because Red is as unpredictable as she is reliable, she brushes along his mind. Barely there, like a brush of a feather, but barely enough for Lance to feel it, to let him know he’s going somewhere on the right track.

“Well, there you are, beautiful.” Lance smiles easy, relief flooding his body. “Let’s take it to the next level.”

Nothing changes. Lance peaks an eye open after a few minutes have passed, before groaning out loud and sinking into his chair. Patience is a virtue his ADHD doesn’t allow him to have.

Maybe simply lounging around waiting for something to happen isn’t the right approach. “I thought waiting around wasn’t your  _style_.”

Heat creeps up on him slowly. At first Lance barely catches it, but the warmth continues to bloom through his chest. Comforting. Like taking a sip of hot chocolate after a chilled day, leaving a shiver behind in its wake.

Except it doesn’t stop there. Sickly heat continues to climb and climb, a temperature has Lance shedding his jacket and still being sweat-drenched. His heartbeat pounds against his chest, rabbit-like. A sense of urgency on the back of his throat dry and bitter and trying to swallow it down. Fight or flight.

Lance lets out a nervous chuckle, eyes skittering across the cockpit as he wipes at his forehead. “Alright, I hear you, Red.” Except he’s not sure exactly what she’s saying or what it’s supposed to mean. All he knows is his alarms are blaring. “I don’t know what you’re saying though. Gotta help me out with this one, buddy. Please.”

There’s no answer besides the pounding in his ears. Thoughts scrambling this way and, chasing after them with desperation he’s never felt before. All he knows is fire burning him alive, hacking on ash and smoke. All makes sense to him is his instincts screaming like a thousand different voices.

“Red, stop!”

 _Danger_.

“I don’t know what to do!”

_Life or death._

“Red!”

Lance shoots right up.

Their connection breaks as soon as he does, leaving his mind dizzy and head pounding against his skull like a bad hangover, his chest heaving with the effort to breathe. A few seconds away makes a subtle difference. Whatever the hell was no longer feels as if it had happened to him. Every moment slips past him feels like a nightmare he’d woken up from. Something happened in another life.

Either way, it had left him  _terrified_.

“I think—“ He swallows hard. The words don’t sound right coming from Lance. “I think’s enough for right now,” Lance finally manages to breathe out.He gripg his jacket and strides out of Red, lungs burning.

Fear is easy to forget, but this piercing sense of danger still leaves Lance shaken. Any attempt to make sense of Red blew up in his face, and honestly, he has no idea where to start next. Or if he wants to.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“You sound like you’re struggling,” Keith’s voice fills his ears, so clear Lance doesn’t even have to close his eyes to picture the smug smile on his face. “Maybe I should go and let you focus.”

Damn him. They both already know Lance isn’t going to take him up on his bait, and Lance isn’t going to admit he wouldn’t take it either.

“What? Me? Struggling?” Lance scoffs playfully, fingers pressing on the side of his helmet to get the visor of his helmet down to take a bite of tonight’s goo concoction. When a flying piece of goo bounces off his spork onto the floor, he sprints. “Sounds like you’re full of shiitaking mushrooms, buddy. That can’t be good for your heart.”

“Actually mushrooms provide protein and a whole other load of antioxidants,” Keith supplies. “Only if they’re cooked.”

“How do you turn a Spy Kids reference into a cooking segment?”

“That was a Spy Kids reference?”

“Oh my God.” Lance laughs. “I have  _so_ much to teach you.”

Conversations like these fill the dull hours between doing nothing, preparing for what Coran claims to be the Voltron show of the millennia, or the list of chores in order to keep the Castle in tip-top shape. Lance has taken these conversations to mean Keith, currently, is facing a similar problem Lance faces within these hours: the fact they both have too many.

Lance has taken it upon himself to upgrade the distance and way they can communicate, with a little troubleshooting from Pidge. It’d been easy when she broken the communications within the Castle to its bare essentials; once Lance had stopped seeing it as an understandable complex alien mechanism and rethought it as a slightly more difficult Bluetooth, it’d been a piece of cake managing to allow transmissions not only to go through the communications room, but in case he’s unable to be there to intercept, through his helmet.

Hence why wiping down the cryopods this time around hadn’t been completely miserable. When Lance gets back to earth, he’ll remember to call Keith to make cleaning his room feel less of a chore.

By the time Lance is finished, he can already hear the argument brewing between Coran and Hunk on who gets to cook dinner tonight, so that leaves Lance about fourty-five minutes before he has to see whether he’ll be pinching his nose all dinner or not. (He’s hoping for  _not_.)

“You got a little over a half hour left before you lose me,” Lance says with a grin. “Ready?"

"Maybe no video today," Keith breaks in. "Think I'm tired."

A click of a button, and Keith’s face is on the screen. Except there's a key difference from how he looked last time.

Underneath his eye, a splash of blue and purple surround the socket of his left reddened eye. It's swollen to the point Lance can barely tell he's awake if it weren't for the fact his gaze is transfixed on him. Each blink looks more playful than the last, even despite the ice pack he holds to it.

“Woah, where the heck did you get that nasty bruise from, man?” Lance can't help it if his voice raises a few octaves, especially considering what's right in front of him right now. He frowns, and inches closer to the screen even though it actually makes no difference of inspecting it.

“This is why I was fine with not showing my face,” Keith mumbles.

“Keith.” Lance's face falls flat, voice serious. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Keith lies. “It was an intense training session. Missed my mark and my mark got me.”

Lance's eyes widen at the new information, face already burning in righteous anger. “Someone from the Blade of Marmora did this to you? I thought you guys were supposed to be a team, not become a walking, talking, breathing punching bag for each other. That’s what  _literal_  punching bags are  _for_.”

“Lance, you’re overreacting. This is how we train," Keith tries to explain.  "No holding back. Our enemies aren’t going to be holding back.”

There's no way Keith can actually find this acceptable, right? Except Lance knows how single-focused and perserverent Keith can get when it comes keeping his eyes and main focused. He's like a machine without an off-switch. A never-ending power source.

“I don’t like it,” Lance mutters with his arms crossing his chest.

“Stop being dramatic.” Keith rolls his eyes lightly, or one of them anyway. His casual demeanor to this sort of loses its merit after that. “This is good for me. For our team.”

Lance wishes he could've shown a mirror to Keith right when he said that.

“Right. Well, I'm smelling dinner.”

Keith nods. “We’ll talk later.”

The screen goes black then, and Lance is left with a slow-building ball of anxiety working through his gut. If this is the first time Lance had seen anything psychical to worry about, he can't help but wonder what else Keith hadn't told him, or anyone else, about in regards to the Blade of Marmore. 

Nothing about this sits right with him.

“Hopefully with less bruises next time,” Lance mutters, despite the fact he's the only one here.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

There’s ash on his tongue.

It falls along the ground like dirty snow, crunching under his boots as he marches through the terrain. The drifting ash makes everything surrounding him appear hazy and shapeless, leaving Lance unable to realize where he is even while squinting through to make sense of where he is. Something about the terrain feels familiar under his feet, but the ash that covers the land in a muted gray has Lance unwilling to relax in.

Each hacking cough rattling through Lance’s body has the hairs at the back of his neck stand straight out. No matter how many times he tries to clear the taste from his mouth, the ash sticks against the roof of his mouth, every swallow feeling like he swallows an ashtray.

He trudges forward anyway. There’s something in his gut telling him to move, so he does.

At first, it feels like a never-ending march; the moment he feels close enough to uncover a break in the ash-fall or find the source, he’s sent a thousand miles back, like he’s being forced back from uncovering the truth.

Suddenly, the smoke clears and he sees it: Earth on the right side of him, Altea on the other, the two of them engulfed in a roaring wall of fire. Lance can hear the telltale signs of buildings collapsing in on itself, distant muffled cries of the people so desperate and guttural that Lance can taste bile at the back of his throat. This close to the burning ruins, his eyes burn from the flames.

In the distance, a man with snowy hair stands straight and unbending, cloak billowing in the flames and winds surrounding them, stares back at him, unblinking.

Lance blinks, and its his mother’s face staring straight at him, their faces inches apart. His heart thumps against his chest, eyes wide and unblinking as he stares up at her and how still she is, dark curls framing her face without even the air tousling them. Every inch of her tinted deep red.

“They’re burning.” It’s her voice, but distorted, missing the airiness and smile that accompanies her more often than not. As if she’s a shadow of herself, like everything that made her his mother had been burned out of her, leaving behind only a shell. “All of them.”

She lifts her arms to showcase the madness, the destruction. The flames seem to burn brighter and hotter, the air tinted in dark orange-brown hue that leaves Lance nauseous in its wake.

“What do I do, mom?” Lance asks, ignoring the fact his mother’s looking at him with eyes that do not belong to her. “I can  _help_ , just tell me what I have to do–”

“You need to listen to everyone and everything around you.” She places her hands on either side of his shoulders, the heat of her skin seeping through the plates of his armor and sinking into his bones. The heat isn’t harsh like the flames burning and threatening; it’s soft and warm like the first ray of a sunrise. “After that, trust what you understand. I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

Behind her, the smoke swirls together like a reaping storm — it’s the end of days. The burning of Rome.

Another wave of goose bumps sprouts over the back of Lance’s neck, trailing along his arms. He strains his muscles as he tilts his head back to try and take in all of the horror within, too abstract and huge to make sense of within the capacity of his own mind.

The weight on his shoulders slide off him, pulling Lance back from the ruins? before him. Instead of his mother standing in front him, drenched in red, is Keith ablaze in a wildfire of flames consuming him. His smile is plastered on his face, smiling bright like he’s happy to be burning alive.

Lance wants to scream, to force himself away to avoid the dead look in his eye as Keith stares back, unblinking, his armor melting against his skin like plastic. The smell has Lance gagging.

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance coughs out, reaching forward for him only for his hand to catch the spitting flames, the heat of it slipping into his veins, prickling, as if his body’s falling asleep. He grips him so tightly his knuckles threaten to break. “We need to get out of here  _right now_. Please, we’ve gotta go and get you help.”

Keith tilts his head to the side, like he’s not sure how to respond.

This person standing in front of him is Keith, from the intensity in his eyes to the way he holds himself, arms crossed and guarded. It’s Keith, but it isn’t Keith, because the Keith he knows is a fighter with a fire inside that burns more intense than the fire surrounding them.

“I like it here,” says Keith, voice smooth as honeysuckle, dream-like. Lance has heard his voice like this before, in a quiet room with the two of them alone, but never anywhere as jarring as this place. “You let me come here.”

Did he? It’s his nightmare, his terrible bad dream, but his mother said to listen. Except nothing anyone is saying makes any semblance of sense to him.

“What the hell are you talking about, man?” Lance asks, wild-eyed, feeling the fire spread along his body, the sensation engulfing him, burning through him like a twig in a forest fire. There’s that edge of desperation to his voice, wanting to bring Keith away from this fate, wake up with Keith in his arms away from the fire swallowing him whole. “You didn’t tell me anything. We have to  _go_.”

And Lance tries, tries with every cell in body burning with the attempt to pull him in, wrap his arms around him to quell the flames, but Keith simply stands there fighting against his form. The flames spread like a virus to Lance, but he refuses to release the hold he has on Keith’s hand, not even when the ache of it tears the scream from his body.

It starts so slowly, the way Keith’s body burns from whole to ash, swirling around him like a tornado. The ash crawls along his face, tears his body apart layer by layer until all Lance can see is the dark swirl of his body wraps around Lance like a blanket.

All that’s left of Keith is the ash he’s now choking on.

Before he’s covered in ash and smoke, he sees the man with the white hair staring at him, eyes glassy with unshed tears, before Lance’s world is plunged into darkness.

Lance wakes with a scream, sweat drenching his sheets as if the fire burned through his dream, and doesn’t fall back asleep again.

 

 

 

* * *

 

  

 

Before the first ring is finished, Keith has already intercepted the transmission.

He’s out of breath when he comes on screen, eyes still drunk with sleep, but Lance doesn’t care. “I thought  _I_ was supposed to be the one to call  _you_ ,” Keith greets, with a warning tone in his voice. Essentially the  _opposite_  of greeting. "We made up the rules together only for you to break them anyway?"

Lance doesn’t intend to argue. “I know.”

“Do you know how dangerous that was?” Maybe it was supposed to come out more stern than it is, but Keith sounds anything but angry. Exhausted from the rush over; relief in the fact he managed to answer before anyone else. “It’s late where you are anyway. I thought this was prime beauty sleep hour or whatever.”

“Aw, you remembered,” Lance coos. “Being attentive and having those listening skills are going to rank you higher on the hottest paladin list.”

“What the  _hell_  are you even talking about right now?”

“Facts. Helpful tips. Whatever you want.”

It takes him a moment to wipe the sleep in his eyes, but Lance can pinpoint the exact moment he does. Keith’s eyes are on him, widening a fraction at what Lance can only assume to be not his best look right now.

“Speaking of,” Keith makes a round-about, his gaze purposefully casual to the point where it’s anything but. “You’re not looking so hot right now.”

Keith’s ability to bluntly point out the more outright chinks in his armor leaves Lance simultaneously bristling because he knows the bags of his eyes are obvious and heart-warmed that despite the fact everyone has their own stuff happening, Keith still manages to tell when Lance is struggling, even half-way across a galaxy.

He’s still not sure how Keith’s managed to maintain that balancing act, but Lance about to start complaining now. Considering how hypocritical it’d be.

With a scoff, Lance says, “Now we both know that’s a lie, Keith. These good looks?” He gestures vaguely at his face with a wave of his hand. “Yeah, that never takes a day off.”

“ _Lance_.” This isn’t the first time Keith’s uttered his name like this, except there’s that crooked tilt of his smile and an edge of amusement there. Lance grins at the trial-and-failure of Keith trying to hold back how much he likes their back and forth.

Too bad it’s about to go south.

Sighing, Lance sinks into his chair, nail picking at the loose stitching in the leather. “You sure you want to hear it? We were having such a good time to let it be tainted by weird shenanigans going on.”

Keith settles down in his seat, leaning forward in his chair with the corner of lips twitching into a sly smirk, as if saying  _try me_. “What kind of weird things, Lance?”

“You really wanna know?” Lance quirks a brow.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”

And how could Lance deny the fact the blunt honesty and concerned gaze act when it works so well for Keith.

“I think Red is trying to teach me something.” The words feel awkward without any evidence besides Lance’s word to back it, but he has no other choice but to trek forward. Not like he needs Keith to believe him when all he offered was an ear anyway. “Or warn me about something. I don’t know, but it’s all vague and jumbled in my head, like a big mess all inside my brain.”

“Hard to tell what’s a you problem and what’s a Voltron problem,” Keith murmurs. His eyes are focused on nothing, his tapping fingers caught in the same beat.

“Exactly,” Lance nearly shouts, back straightening in his chair. The volume of it seems to snap Keith’s attention back to him and Lance offers a twisted smile of apology. “I’m trying to make sense of it, but I can’t. Not without…”

“Asking someone who used to be in your spot,” Keith finishes.

Something about how blunt Keith’s words are makes Lance feels like he’s missing a step, almost as if the conversation is taking place in a room in a two-way mirror where Lance is in the room and Keith’s on both sides. Limited access.

Maybe Lance is reading too much into Keith’s words like he always does, analyzing them for a hidden message or language he doesn’t understand, but wants to learn. Maybe Lance is just imagining it like he is with Red, transforming weird instances into catastrophic problems. Either way, he’s not expecting Keith to point out the answers.

Keith’s brows are drawn tight in thought, hands clasped over his mouth but otherwise mastering the art of keeping his emotions hidden under his sleeve. A look Lance has come to recognize as height of Keith’s Decision Process. “I used to have some pretty bad nightmares when I was with Red.” He rubs his knuckles so hard Lance fears they might bruise. “They were pretty hard to tell if it was from Red or if they were just… me.”

Everything feels so inexplicably fragile in this moment. Lance is hesitant to keep speaking in case he slips up and their entire connection shatters like glass in his hand, but he forces the fear down and asks, “Did you ever figure it out? If the nightmares came from you or not, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Keith answers. “I think the lions don’t purposefully try to scare us or anything. Never got that feeling from them.” He pauses, mouth downturned at the corners as he keeps his eyes focused on his hands. “They just push us to what we already know. Or, at least that’s what Red does.”

From the limited and shallow knowledge Lance has of the lions, he can agree with Keith here without doubt.

“Did it make sense then?” Lance asks, eyes intent on the lines crinkled between Keith’s eyebrows, the way they hold the weight of whatever it is that plagues him. “Whatever it was Red pushed you towards?”

Keith stills for a moment before releasing a breath. “I think…” He finally looks back at Lance with a look he can’t place, dark eyes looking past him or maybe into him, as if trying to make sense of Lance himself. If Keith can finish the last of his words with Lance in the room. “It’s one of those things we won’t know until we run smack into it.”

“Maybe for you, Mr. Hothead.” The corner of Lance’s mouth twitches upwards, almost challenging, definitely desperate to break apart the heavy air surrounding them now. “Unlike you though, I  _like_  to think things through  _before_  jumping into a burning village or going against Zarkon one on one. I’m  _logical_  that way.”

A tired huff of a laugh escapes from Keith, his head shaking slowly. “Think that might be part of your problem then.”

“Well whatever our problems may or may  _not_  be, in pretty specific cases,” Lance glances towards Keith to catch the playful roll of his eyes before he could miss it, he settles. A warmer smile rises over his face like a sunrise. “I’m glad we have each other to talk to about it.”

It’s like a jolt runs through Keith at the words, the truth of them seeping into his system as if experiencing the fall of rain against his skin for the first time. The smile that follows after him is slow and gradual, taking a while to get itself started, but it reaches every inch of his face.

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, voice soft. “Guess we do.”

Across the entire galaxy, miles and miles away from here, that smile still has the ability to bring warmth to Lance. It shouldn’t be as surprising as it is to Lance.

“I should be sleeping, and so should you,” Keith says after a beat. “We both have training in the morning. Or, I do anyway.”

Lance knows Keith has to go. Doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Sleep sounds nice right about now.”

“You’ll be okay, right?” Keith asks after slipping his armor over his clothes, looking at Lance directly into the camera. It feels as if these seconds are the longest he’s ever had. “Until I come back.”

Lance raises a brow. “You’re planning on coming back?”

A hesitant smile threatens to break out across Keith’s face. No matter how much effort he puts in trying to act like he’s above it all, Keith wears his heart on his sleeve. Always has. “Well, this mission isn’t going to last forever.”

“Sure seems like it.”

“I know, but it’s better like this.” For a moment it seems as if Keith’s finished, his gaze shifting between Lance and the way his thumbs circle each other. Contemplative, until he speaks. “You and I talking, I mean.”

They stare at each other, a little too long to be considered a friendly goodbye. Even without Keith in the room, the air between them transforms into something magnetic that seeps into his skin and settles in his bones. He wonders, briefly, if they were together right now, what they’d do, if their hands would brush against each other soft and playful like the movies, or whether they’d clear their throats and awkwardly wish each other goodnight.

“For me too,” Lance says, voice soft without even realizing. His heart’s in his throat, tremulous and aching to spill it all.

Full on grinning, Keith shakes his head in what Lance has learned to mean fondness. “ _Goodnight_ , Lance.” He pauses. "You should tell the others about what's going on with you and Red. If I'm not back before another nightmare."

“Keep being a cool space ninja or whatever. We’ll still be here for you when you come back.” He ignores the way his throat tightens, brings the picturesque Lance McClain smile front and center despite the fact he’d rather be doing anything but. “Night, Keith.”

There’s always a moment minutes before or after a transmission comes to an end. One that’s unnamed between the both of them, but a sensation the two of them couldn’t ignore even though they wanted to. That hesitance on the urge to say something more before someone says goodbye, with you never knowing if there never will be another chance again. Whether it be as something as simple as ‘ _Be careful_ ’ or a ‘ _Don’t leave_ ’.

The screen goes black after Keith leaves, taking all the color with him, and Lance is left with the not-so-startling realization he’d avoided himself to think about:  _He misses Keith_.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

One aspect Lance had expected in his and Keith’s little long-distance relationship agreement was unholy time zones and the detrimental affect it’d have on his sleep. He’d seen it a thousand times before back at the Garrison where plenty of students desperately tried to keep contact with their significant others….; it was the first rule listed, front and center in ginormous, bold letters, expect a screwed up talking schedule.

Not that this agreement they had qualified as an  _actual long distance relationship_  or Keith his  _significant love friend_  or anything like that. It’s a simplification if anyone were to ask.

The point is, Lance finally understood why anyone in a long distance relationship would feel exhausted in the morning. Being a paladin of Voltron only increased how tired he was ten-fold. From training to performances to waiting up at night under the hope of a slim chance Keith may call that night took a greater tax on him than he’d originally expected.

Still wouldn’t trade it for all the beauty sleep in the world though.

Because before they set up their secret little rendezvous in the dead of night, something that’s theirs, Lance didn’t have much to look forward to. The Voltron shows were fun and all, probably the highlight of his day, and training in between spending time with his friends filled the hours, Lance’s days became static. Never mind the fact Red seemed to be all but rejecting his very essence, it’s difficult to do anything besides putting up the façade he’s perfect within the last few weeks.

Either he’s a more incredible actor than he originally realized, or everybody else hasn’t managed to pick it up yet.

But these calls with Keith, however limited and sometimes sporadic they may be, is something Lance realized he’s come to look forward to. With Keith, there’s no mask he puts up to distract everyone from the fact they’re one paladin short, because Keith’s right across from him drenched in a hazy blue light.

There’s no pretending with Keith, and even if it’s just for a few stolen moments, Lance doesn’t have to pretend with himself either.

He’ll regret this all in the morning when the alarm blares through his ear drums into his skull. Until then he’ll enjoy this, how Keith’s laugh ring through his ears like a song, and the fact that Lance’s eyelids are heavy but he’s nowhere near tired yet.

Keith’s laugh is becoming one of his favorite sounds.

“So you guys got kicked out of an alien retirement home for being that bad? I thought old people were supposed to be nice,” says Keith, the airiness in his voice still present.

“Nope. They gave us the awkward silence, the boot, and the cane combo.” Lance sighs, heavy and to the point where even he can’t hide the grin spreading across his face. “Guess no second visit or cards from  _Abuela Alien_  during Space Christmas.”

That earns a muffled snort from Keith. “That’s embarrassing.”

“Hey, you weren’t there,” Lance chastises, raising a brow at him through the screen in what he could only assume to be at least somewhat menacing. “It was  _extremely_  embarrassing.”

From the way the corners of Keith’s mouth twist upwards, Lance manages to receive the desired effect. “I guess that’s the end for the Voltron Show Tour, huh?”

“Well, we all decided to give Coran one last chance,” Lance says with a shrug. He places his cheek against the palm of his hand, propping himself up after tuckering out against the fight against gravity. “We’re going to end up throwing some sort of play, according to Coran.”

“Oh, so that’s what Coran’s going to do. Put on really bad plays.” Keith snarks, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards in a smirk that has Lance pulling at the collar of his shirt. “Can’t tell you how glad I am knowing I got to miss that.”

The words sting, but Lance manages well enough to quell it down. It’s midnight, and Lance doesn’t want to spend the few moments they have together dwelling on something he can’t exactly change. “We got a pretty good understudy for you actually.” Lance replies, glancing over at Keith with an attempt to not sound as tired as he feels.

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“Allura,” Lance answers. “According to Coran, she captures your ‘annoyed and angry yet distantly cool lone-wolf vibe’. He’s gonna make her  _howl_.”

Keith scrunches the side of his face up at that. “Does Coran think I’m just angry and annoyed all the time?” He pauses, his fingers playing with the cuffs of his jacket. “I’m not  _always_  angry.”

“Well, I know that. Maybe if you were here you could’ve actually added some nuances to your character,” Lance suggests, chin in his hand, his finger dragging lazily across the dashboard of the control room.

A silence stretches before them for a beat. It’s as if Lance has broken some unspoken rule within their conversations: act like nothing’s changed, Keith’s still here, and never truly acknowledge the fact Keith’s gone.

What? Neither of them ever claimed it to be the  _best_ rule.

“You won’t need me there to add nuances or whatever.” Keith’s fingers tap steadily along the expanse of the table he’s sat at, eyes purposefully focused away from Lance. “Like you said, right? Allura has my part, and apparently she’s got me down pretty well. No need for a more detailed picture than that.”

“If you say so." 

Keith raises a brow. “And you don’t?”

“Either way I’ll be sure to send you a copy of our last performance. You want my autograph?” Lance snaps his fingers. “Trick question, of course you’d want me autograph.”

“Voltron paladin autographs are worth a lot in the black market,” Keith says, happy to change the subject. “Or anywhere GAC isn’t a major currency anyway.”

“Hey! I’m not giving you the copy to sell it, jerk. They’re supposed to be free anyway.” Lance emphasizes the fact, which only earns a twitch of a reaction from Keith who’s now cleaning his blade. New habit apparently. “ _Besides_ , nobody wants an autograph with a specialized message not for them.”

Keith peaks a brow. Apparently not only is Lance the master of dismantling a business before it ever sees the light of day, but at garnering Keith’s attention as well.

“So… What would the message be exactly? You talking about how great and talented you are?”

“It’s sweet that you think that,” Lance grins at the amused roll of Keith’s eyes, “But in order to get the whole effect, you actually have to keep what I send you. No selling it to the first person who waves some cash in your face.”

“Not even to buy you a present?” The bastard has the gall to smile at Lance, as if Keith’s made some sort of tantalizing offer.

Which hey, Lance won’t Keith’s attempt as bribary  _may_  have worked if Lance weren’t so stubborn in the first place. He likes presents, big deal. Especially if it were an attempt made from Keith of all people.

Lance grins. “As tempting as that may be, I’m still going to have to go with not selling my hand-crafted signature slash note to you. It’s worth too much.”

“Guess you made your point.”

“I guess I did.”

Lance attempts a thumbs up that turns into a yawn halfway through.

“I feel like I should let you sleep,” Keith says, tone soft and warm. “Feel like you’re barely keeping your head up.”

“My head ‘s fine,” Lance mumbles against the palm…………… please don’t say meat of his hand, not wanting to risk any potential embarrassment from how Keith’s eyes are fixed on him. Last thing he wants is for Keith to have the one up on him with something as trivial as drool on his chin, especially since Lance had really let Keith have it when he sneezed against the camera. “Can stay up for a couple more hours—no, days—tops. I’m the family  _champion_  of all nighters amongst my siblings, you won’t stand a chance.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Despite the words, Keith’s voice sounds fond. “You don’t have to stay up for me. We’ll talk soon.”

“Oh, you think I’m staying up for you, huh?” Lance straightens his back and doesn’t miss the pop of relief, chin resting on his hand in a way that signifies how into this he already is. “Seems rather presumptuous of you, Keith. Maybe I’ve become a night owl since you’ve been gone, huh?”

Keith huffs, minus the heat. “This coming from a guy who complained for a straight hour when Allura had us do night-time drills? What did you say?” A playful smirk crosses his lips, the perfect picture of Keith getting to his level. “ _’I need all the beauty sleep I can get_.’”

“One, I do not sound like that,” he raises his middle finger first, smirking at Keith’s snort before he adds another one alongside it, “Two, that wasn’t how it went down, so you’re wrong. Again.”

“I thought I was presumptuous, not wrong,” Keith counters. “You’re mixing your arguments up. Face it, you’re tired.”

“Maybe you need to face that you’re both presumptuous  _and_ wrong.”

“Not until you admit you’re up because of me.”

“And If I said yes?”

“What?”

“If I said yes that there’s no other reason I’m up right now, what would you say?” Lance clarifies, moving his chin to rest on top of his forearms instead. Making sure Keith is still in his line of sight.

Keith blinks. “I don’t know.”

“Not an answer, buddy.”

“Fine,” Keith huffs. “I guess, relieved. Or whatever.”

Lance hadn’t expected that to be Keith’s answer, but it does pique his interest. Like a moth to a flame, he can’t help but fly to towards the fire.

“How come?”

Shrugging once, Keith merely says, “Guess it’d suck if you weren’t as into this. Or whatever.”

“Well I am.”

“I know.” Keith smirks then. “Or else you’d be asleep right now.”

“Shut up, Keith." 

“Goodnight, Lance,” Keith says. The smile on his face grows only wider, and Lance can’t stop watching him. “Go to bed.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

  

Lance can’t deny the amount of relief that follows after their final Voltron show.

Not that Lance doesn’t love the attention or anything. The day he ever doesn’t want to experience having the world’s — the galaxy’s — eyes on him is the day the planets stop turning and the sun freezes over. It’s just that, well, people loved him, but people only loved one part of him. A part of him that wasn’t the real Lance, just an over exaggerated part of him that’s barely a fraction of who he is.

Attention is nice when it’s for the right reasons, which Lance is sure everyone’s thinking after the mess Coran had created

Kolivan, Shiro, and Allura discuss the next plan of action regarding new information discovered about the Galra. Lance sits a good distance away with the others surrounding Hunk’s paladin chair, pretending to listen to them discussing about analyzing the disgusting worm that had been lodged in Coran’s brain earlier, but his mind is elsewhere. His eyes keep looking back at the screen, back at Keith. It’s all dark besides the faint glowing light of the video screen on Kolivan and Keith’s faces, Keith standing stiff at attention with his head up and his eyes focused on nothing at all.

That’s how it was back at the Garrison. Keith the prodigy. Someone who could fly a simulator perfectly and stand at attention with an automatic response that had his professors  _ooing_  and  _ahhing_  over just how well Keith followed their orders. Staring at him, it wouldn’t be too hard of a guess to assume that Keith just took everything out of his mind and only focused on what was needed instead of what he wanted— that he turned off his emotions because he needed to.

Back then, Lance had figured Keith didn’t have any other feelings besides wanting to be the best. Now, Lance wonders what he’d kept hidden behind that stone mask of him, especially as he sees him in the screen.

Despite their distanceLance manages to catch Keith’s gaze. He’s still as serious as ever, as if he’s staring through Lance rather than at him, but Lance has that same funny, warm feeling in the pit of his stomach that always happens when he catches Keith looking at him. Lance sticks his tongue out at him and smiles brightly when he catches sight of the corner of Keith’s mouth twitching up so quick that Lance nearly missed it. as Keith forces his attention back to the matter at hand, Lance can’t seem to look anywhere  _but_  Keith.

“I think we should plan an attack  _now_ ,” says Shiro. There’s an edge to his voice that hadn’t always been there, the calmness slipping away from him much more quickly ever since he came back. “We have the forces needed from the coalition and it’d take a while for the Galra to muster up forces in order to respond. They’re weakened right now, and we’re stronger.”

Kolivan sighs over the com. “Just because we have the available forces necessary for an attack doesn’t mean we should take one,” he states, his voice drained of energy. Maybe he’d just returned from a mission, or maybe he’s tired of dealing with them. It’s hard to tell. “Even if the Galra do  _seem_  weakened, doesn’t mean they are.”

“I believed we agreed that doing nothing is a coward’s move, Kolivan,” Allura says in her usual diplomatic tone, although her eyes are like daggers digging into Kolivan from across the screen. “We should make an attempt to take out a significant portion of the Galra’s army while we have the resources to do so.”

“With all due respect, princess, but I don’t think now’s the right time. Not until the Blade of Marmora can gather more Intel,” Kolivan says.

“You asked for time and we gave it to you,” Shiro replies, arms crossed over his chest. “We did our part, now it’s time for you to do yours.”

Both Shiro and Kolivan stare each other down through the screens. There’s a heavy silence that falls over the room, palpable and suffocating from how thick it is in the air. The occasional beeps from the console and Hunk’s incessant foot tapping are the only sounds that come through, as if everyone’s holding their breath and waiting for the other foot to slam.

Keith must feel it too, since his eyes snap towards Lance after shifting his gaze between the both of them like a tennis match. From how stiff he is, Lance can tell that the Castle’s tension is mutual on the other side.

He brushes the tip of his nose with the pad of his thumb, the signal for Lance to stay awake for an interception. Nodding once, Lance can’t help but feel any excitement is overshadowed by the intensity in the air.

It’s beginning to feel uncomfortable by the time Kolivan takes a breath, slow like he’s planning to erupt. He merely straightens his back. “We will continue along with our mission and continue to accelerate our plans with Voltron for a future charge against the Galra.” The words are clipped and short, obvious with how artificial the bitter acceptance is. “Be aware of future contact for development, Voltron.”

The screen turns black in an instant and silence falls over the room once more. 

No relief that comes after the meeting like it usually does. His stomach’s in knots at the prospect of landing an attack on the Galra so soon, with so little Intel and untrained recruits that are more like kids shooting off toy guns than a formidable coalition. 

There’s no good time to launch a battle against the Galra Empire, Lance knows this as much as anyone, but he can’t help but feel as if they’re diving head-first using their hands to see instead of a flashlight. 

Suddenly Lance may kinda miss these Voltron shows.

The rest of the day is spent with him racking his brain around why now of all any other times was deemed the best time to strike and playing the role of the guy who never worries about anything, if only to settle Hunk’s, and to a much lesser degree, Pidge’s nerves.

With a discreetness he’s come to master over the last few weeks, he hovers around the communications deck, whether it be Lance saying he’s ‘Taking a stroll along the Castle halls, Coran, I’m enjoying the sights around me’ or straight up sitting in his usual seat, forged perfectly to the weight and form of his body. It’s difficult for Lance to focus on anything besides the infinitude slow passage of ticks.

The call comes through and Lance accepts it with a quick click of a button. “Tell me that plan doesn’t sound weird to you.” 

“ _’Hey Keith, how are you?_ ’ Fine thanks,” Keith deadpans, staring right at Lance with an unimpressed look to his eyes that only makes Lance feel  _a little_  guilty.

Lance’s shoulders drop, because okay, he can understand the reaction. “Sorry, I know that wasn’t the best greeting in the universe, but this is  _serious_ , Keith. This plan… Something about it doesn’t feel right.”

Maybe it’s the desperation lining his words or simply Lance himself, but any notion of Keith making some comeback melts away into a simple look of sincerity. Despite everything, Lance knows he can count on Keith to at least hear him out.

That’s all Lance needs anyway.

“Without Kolivan or Shiro here, be honest.” Lance doesn’t dare break the hold on his gaze he holds with Keith, not for a moment. “This doesn’t sound totally ill-prepared to you?”

“Why does it matter what I think anyway? Not like the plan hasn’t already been approved of or anything.” Keith sighs after breaking the silence, simple and revealing all in one question, one that has Lance’s chest tightening.

“Because talking stuff out with you makes sense to me. I like hearing what you have to say,” Lance answers, not missing a beat. “We’re a team, remember?”

Keith glances behind his shoulder briefly, breathing in deep before turning his head back around. His fingers keep moving and rubbing against each other, which only makes Lance furrow his brows in concern. “I don’t know, Lance,” he admits after a moment. “I trust Kolivan and Shiro to make the right call. This plan could work.”

Doubt prickles along Lance’s skin. “Some part of you doesn’t believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Keith snaps, a warning sign this conversation is headed towards a no-entry zone. Like an animal baring its teeth before it bites. “ _Shiro’s_  the leader now, and Kolivan’s  _my_  leader. I trust their judgment over my own.”

Bitterness stains the words, though Keith’s eyes are wider, a desperate finality to them that marks this conversation as done. Lance knows that look. It’s Keith’s first warning sign before an attempt to flee, from what, Lance still hasn’t managed to figure out.

“Who cares if you’re not the leader right now?” Because Lance can’t make sense why Keith, number one anarchist in the face of authority, the first to do the complete opposite of what he’s told, would be the first to roll over on his back. “It shouldn’t matter. You’re not suddenly barred from having an opinion just because you’re not calling the shots anymore.”

Keith grits his teeth, his fingertips digging into his temples in what was probably supposed to be an attempt at soothing. “My opinions get people  _hurt_ , Lance. What part of that don’t you get? You called it out from the beginning.”

Normally, Lance would have some semblance of a clue what Keith was talking about, some clue as to why he was upset. It’d always been clear to him, because usually when they had managed to wiggle their way under each other’s skin, present and thought-consuming, like a burning itch needing to be scratched, Lance  _knew_  what they were doing.

And it had always been superficial, like Lance whining about being paired with Keith and Keith throwing himself into Lance’s way by stealing a target right out from under his nose. None of that had so foreign as to why, because Lance knew why, at least on his side, even if he didn’t yet admit it to himself completely.

Except now, he’s at a loss, because he only wants to help, but all he’s doing is making it  _worse_.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You said I was selfish, and you were right. I was selfish while I was a leader and it got people hurt—it had all of you  _mad_  at me.” Keith looks away, and though his face may not be in complete view, the scowl on his face is hard to miss. “I’m not a leader, so I’m doing what I do best and staying where I need to be. Where I’m the most useful. Now you’re dragging me back in when I’m right where I need to be.”

Lance blinks. “That was a long time ago, Keith. Back before I even knew you,  _really_ knew you. And who cares if you’re not a leader?”

“The thing is, you were right,” Keith says, voice filled with restrained emotion. “I am selfish. Or I was. The point is I’m trying not to be anymore.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Keith’s face is a stern, an uncrackable mask. “I don’t want to make the calls, so I’m listening to them now. Thinking of the team like you wanted me to.”

The fact is, Keith isn’t wrong in his reasoning. Lance had wanted Keith to think of the team, to consider the actions before the consequences reared in and stung them, but he hadn’t expected him to fluctuate between two extremes. One end diving headfirst without a thought, the other kept in a prison he’s gripping white-knuckled as if his thoughts were animals on the verge of tearing into everyone.

Whoever’s standing before Lance, unwilling to so much as even question the right choices, is not the same Keith he was before he left to join the Blade.

Fact is, Keith hadn’t been Keith long before he left. Only difference now is Lance has finally reached his limit with pretending otherwise. For his and Keith’s sake.

And if Lance were truly being honest, he can’t help but feel as if he had some part in this.

“Are you saying it’s my fault you left?” Lance is sure to keep the hurt from his voice, or the accusation occasionally slipped in without realizing. He was going to get Keith to talk, whether he wanted to avoid it or not.

“What? No,” Keith frowns. “You were  _right_ though. I thought this would’ve been a good victory for you.”

The air turns sour, or it tastes that way to Lance. Because he expected at least some opposition, a subtle change of the subject to whatever training routine Kolivan had him run, or the signature Keith Kogane  _I-don’t-feel-like-talking-about-this-anymore_  look. Instead the words bite, a passive aggressive reminder of what Lance had outgrown from the first time they met.

Except maybe it was Lance’s truth, not Keith’s. Or maybe this pushback was simply another symptom of Keith’s inability to hold a conversation deeper than what the other did that day.

And well, Lance is more stubborn than Keith gives him credit for. “I don’t care about winning when it comes to the reason why you left, Keith,” Lance replies, fingers curling and uncurling into the cracked leather seat. “Because, let’s face it, we both know you were gone way before Kolivan offered you a position.

Keith stares back at him, his expression carefully unreadable. No explosive outburst, no insistent disagreement. This means Lance has to be following at least  _some_  shred of the truth.

“You ditching Voltron for the shows for Blade of Marmora training wasn’t just some accidental coincidence, huh? Maybe the first couple times, sure, but  _come on, Keith_.” He can’t stop now he’s gained traction, months-worth of pent up words gushing out of Lance like a river breaking a dam. Overwhelming and without a semblance of control other than to push forward. “There wasn’t a single second of hesitation before you volunteered for Kolivan’s Blade of Marmora mission. Zip.  _Nada_.”

“If this was such a big deal to you, why are you only saying something now, Lance?” Keith’s jaw is clenched tight, his tone bitter, as if he’s in a tug-of-war between holding back his defenses and on the verge of not giving a shit. “You were there. You could’ve said  _something_  but you didn’t and now you’re getting angry with me. As always.”

“ _As always_?” Lance repeats, volume rising. “I wasn’t angry with you until you made it about some stupid competition like we’re back where we started. It’s like you’re  _trying_ to pick a fight right now.”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” Keith snaps. Not the same way he does when Lance gives an ill-time joke during a serious mission, but one that cuts. “You’re my friend, not my fucking therapist, Lance. Nobody asked you to start picking apart my brain to try and find some secret deeper meaning when there isn’t one.”

“That’s the whole point of a friend, you don’t  _have_  to  _ask_ for people to give a crap about you. They just do.” Lance’s chest coils tight, face hot as he stares down Keith over the screen. He can’t keep still, legs bouncing too rapid for Lance to completely wipe the sweat from his palms. “Why can’t you see that?”

“What? You think we’re different now because the two of us have a few conversations together? Well, nothing’s changed. Sorry to disappoint.”

Lance bites down the urge to growl, his pulse drumming in his ears. “Why are you lying right now?”

“This isn’t some Garrison freshman orientation where we bond sharing a few facts with each other, or where everyone’s opinions matter.” Keith’s voice is firm, despite the fact he’s broken eye contact and hasn’t been able to look at Lance since. “It’s a  _war_.”

Lance’s stomach hollows. This isn’t how he’d expected this conversation to go, vitriol and each word dripping with acid.

An ache rocks through his body, something he hadn’t prepared to deal with. He prepared for avoidance and refusal and a shut down, a flash of anger, active withdrawal rather than an outright shove. That everything they went through in the past few months of conversations they’d both looked forwards towards, hell, the way they looked and stood together before Keith ever made the decision to leave, had meant nothing.

Keith’s a bad liar, it’s a known fact, especially if Keith felt caught or back pressed against a wall, trapped. Lance made the mistake of thinking he was above it.

Only a few seconds ago, the air had been a warzone, both sides bristling and angry, like a couple of children running around with knives and scissors the right way up. Now the air is still and rife with tension, thick with it, like a heavy silence after gunfire.

Lance isn’t an idiot. At least, not where it counts.

“One of these days your emotional constipation is gonna blow up in your face, if it already hasn’t,” Lance says, his throat squeezed tight. “Pushing everyone away isn’t what a team is supposed to be.”

They lock eyes. It’s a last chance to salvage this last bit of the conversation before it inevitably ends according to the unspoken energy in the room. Keith’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Lance supresses the urge to break away, sure he wants that victory to go to neither of them.

“I have to go before Kolivan can hear us,” Keith mutters to the space behind Lance’s eyes, an answer that isn’t an answer, because he’s running away again. “We’ll talk later.” 

Keith glances at him minutely before the signal’s gone and the screen’s gone dark, leaving Lance behind to stare at the reflection of himself, noticing for the first time how sad he looks. Sat lamely in the chair, alone in a dark room, eyes glossy and hands balled into fists.

This isn’t what he wanted when Lance intended to make sense of this discovery, of the mission and the mess of his sleeping feelings. It’s not what he wanted, but it’s what he got, because maybe Keith was right. Feelings didn’t matter, certainly not each other’s. 

How did it get fucked up so fast? 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

Keith doesn’t call back.

That’s not the unusual part though. It’s normal for Keith to sometimes go days without contacting the Castle, either due to the fact he’s on a mission or because he hadn’t found a proper time that would allow him to sneak away from Kolivan in order to make the call. Lance, despite how impatient he can be, knows when to calm himself down and be patient for Keith to call back. Because despite the silence, Lance knew in his gut that Keith would call sometime, just like he knew that the sun would rise the next day.

Except now, with their fight looming over his head like a raincloud hovering over his head, he can’t help but wonder if this silence is purposeful or not. Or whether or not Keith plans on making a call anytime soon.

Although, now that Lance thinks about it, what happened with them wasn’t exactly a fight. Not like the conversation was pleasant or anything like that, because now when if he finds himself thinking too long about that night, his stomach drops as if he’d stepped over the ledge and couldn’t feel the ground underneath him . It was nothing like the arguments they’d have when they first met each other in space, there was no yelling or barely hurtful insults being thrown around to each other. It was all in the tone of Keith’s voice, in the fact that his entire face had changed in an instant. It had been that cold feeling that had overcame them, like Lance had stepped into darkness without realizing he’d made a wrong turn.

It’s not like he could exactly tell anyone what happened in the first place. These secret video communications were supposed to be kept secret between the two of them. They were both being selfish, talking to each other when they weren’t supposed to and putting the security and secrecy of the Blade of Marmora on the line in order to keep that.

The Blade of Marmora. At one point they had been shiny and new, cool to the eye if you didn’t look close enough. But Allura had seen right through them when they first met, and now Lance had seen it too. They were a necessary ally for the war, but they had unorthodox methods, and just because they managed to survive as long as they had, didn’t mean that they were the best or only guys to stop the Galra.

Lance had hoped Keith would realize that at some point and would come home. See for himself that the Blade of Marmora wasn’t for him even if he thought it was because of his newfound connection with the Blade, and make the decision to come back months ago. But it turns out that if anything, Keith had seemed to found where he belonged and thrived.

For a while, Lance had believed Keith had been in denial, about himself, about what he believed in when it came to his relation to the Galra and the Blade of Marmora, of what he believed would be best for the team.

Maybe Lance was the one in denial about Keith ever coming back. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

War is never like the stories. Reality tends to seep the idea that there’s any actual winning.

When Lance was younger, his mom used to read him stories about the rag-tag group of heroes saving the day. Heroes journeys always had a few setbacks because a good story isn’t meant to be an easy story, but Lance had figured out the formula in order to no longer fear if his favorites would lose. It’s formulaic and simplistic because nobody likes a story where the hero loses. They’d trick the villain and save all the citizens, nobody dies, and everybody gets to go home.

Lance isn’t as naïve as he once was. Victories never come without any losses.

It had been easier at the start. Fresh eyed and still filled with wonderment at the beauty of it all; how he’d win the war and then the princess’ heart and show her the beauties of home, just like the other stories. The only worries on his mind were about how angry his mom would be for how long he was gone, the amount of make-up homework he’d have to finish.

Each battle hammered in the truth. Lance nearly blown to bits to protect Coran; the entire team separated and lost among endless stars; Shiro disappearing without a trace; Allura nearly sacrificing herself over and over; every single one of them teasing the edge of death with one hanging over. No matter how many wins they bring, sacrifice always comes with the package.

What Lance comes to learn through sacrifice is no one deals with the aftermath the same way. Voltron recons back on the Galra Resistance Battle cruiser, walking in through the chaos of pilots shouting out names Lance doesn’t recognize, others sobbing into the chests and arms of those who found their way back to them. And those who sit silently in the sidelines, hands clasped together, eyes dead.

Allura’s hand slips into Lance’s and when he glances towards her, the unshed tears explains everything. He squeezes her hand gently, and doesn’t let go until Allura, Shiro, and Coran are called away for a meeting with Olia and Kolivan. Lance loses track of Pidge when she calls Matt’s name, then Hunk when he goes after her.

He walks along the edge of the bridge, and stares out around them. Debris and craters of Naxzela float around them, some ships still in tact close, other ships that are burned, fragments, floating alongside the cruiser aimlessly. All of this could have been avoidable, he knows this deep in his gut, but he’s not sure how.

It hurts to make sense of it all, and Lance wants more than anything to shut every out. Footsteps round the corner before Lance has the opportunity to sink away from the rest of the ship.

“Lance?” Keith asks, as if uncertain despite the blue paladin armor making it obvious it’s him. Lance twists at the sound of his voice, an instinct ingrained in his body, a reflex.

Lance expects himself to ignore Keith, to take one look at him and walk away in a stubborn attempt to shove everything Keith had thrown back at him back in Keith’s face. Take a shot back and win. The real victory is Lance couldn’t stomach it.

Because there Keith is, hair sticking up wildly as if the wind ran its fingers through it, sweat rolling down his temples, pupils blown. Alive, without a screen separating the two of them, so close Lance could touch, but a ghost of himself. Face pale and fingers twitching at his side.

Lance had expected a bitter taste of anger mixed in with relief from standing face to face with Keith after all this time, after the battle they just endured, but all that’s left are the stones free-falling in his stomach.

“Hey, Keith,” Lance says, slow and more stilted than he intended. It’d been so easy for Lance once upon a time always knew the right trick to stampede over the awkwardness surrounding a conversation, but even he can admit he’s lost on what to say after surviving a Galra attack after an argument. “I, ugh—  _Oof_.”

Keith’s body slams against his. Arms wrap around him like a vice, strong and muscles shaking, as if he can’t believe he’s here to do this. For a moment, all Lance can do is stand rigid and stiff, not expecting a hug or anything from Keith whatsoever, but then he sinks into Keith’s hold. He digs his fingers into Keith’s shoulders, his back, shivers at the cold press of Keith’s nose pressed into Lance’s shoulder. It’s their pulses, racing and wild against each other’s chests that remind him they’re alive.

It’s obvious something strange and intense had left its mark on Keith. Whether it’s something permanent like a scar or a scrape across the knee still remains to be seen.

Either way, no matter what actually happened, Lance knows what his job here is.

Eventually, Keith drags himself out of Lance’s hold. Lance isn’t sure if he misses Keith’s warmth or the fact that in the moment, Keith had pulled him in instead of pushing him away. “I heard everyone over the comlink,” Keith explains, the words as stilted and awkward as Lance’s felt. “I didn’t… I thought something happened…”

It makes sense then. The fear on Keith’s face had only mirrored Lance’s own— the fear of being too late, the fear of losing the ones you care about the most.

Lance lifts a hand, palm out, cutting Keith off effectively. “Hey, man, don’t worry about it.” He has no idea what he’s saying, but the most important part is that it  _feels_ right. “You don’t need a reason to hug me.”

“I know, but…” Keith’s arms cross tight over his chest, and shrinks into it. As if it’s an attempt to not be completely seen, or to not disturb the air around them. “It’s just not something we usually do.”

There’s truth in those words. Stinging like a gust of air brushing against a freshly scraped knee.

“Well, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t usually do anymore,” Lance says, cringing at how it could sound more passive aggressive than he meant it to be. The lack of response and intensity of Keith’s focus pushes him forward. “It usually comes with the package when people change, Keith. Doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing.” 

“I know.” 

“Do you though?”

Lance refuses to tiptoe around the awkwardness. While Keith can handle a blade better than anyone twice his weight or stature and manages to hold his own with the strength of a probably army, he’s inept at holding a meaningful conversation, especially one that involves a conflict. Not without baring his teeth or running away from one anyway.  

“Now I do,” Keith amends, his face hardening into a more serious expression, making the angles sharper despite the way his eyes soften, as if Lance can see the understanding reflecting in them. One of the more honest moments since Lance last saw him. “Look, Lance, I screwed up.”

 _Oh_.

In the spirit of honesty, Lance hadn’t been expecting that.

With a slow exhale, Keith’s eyes occasionally glance back, as if rehearsing or picking out the exact words he wants to say, planning instead of just jumping in, completely out of his element. Lance stays patient until finally Keith manages to say, “I stopped talking to you.” 

“Yeah.” It’s hard to argue with a truth as blunt as that one. “Yeah, you did.”

“I do this thing sometimes,” Keith pauses and frowns at himself, seemingly frustrated although difficult to tell what exactly he’s frustrated about. “Pushing people away, even if they care about me. Especially if they care about me, I guess.”

Lance swallows dryly, as if tip-toeing the edge of a grand discovery you can’t quite make out yet, only that the flipping in your gut knows it’s something transformative. “Why?”

“I don’t know why I do it, I just do.” It’s as much of an explanation Keith is willing, or maybe even  _can_  give, but it’s a start. One tiny piece to a thousand-piece puzzle that makes up Keith Kogane. “All I know is that I shouldn’t have done it to you. You’re more like the last person I wanted to do that too.”

Keith's always been a bad liar, but that only makes it when he speaks the truth all the more believable. 

“Are we okay?”

“Of course, man,” Lance answers, and to exemplify this fact, he takes a calculated risk. He slips his hand into Keith’s, and doesn’t miss the quiet gasp that escapes past his lips that leaves Lance’s ears burning. “People should get second chance—” He grins. “At least in my book anyway.” 

The corner of Keith’s mouth twitches upwards and raises a brow. “You write books now?”

It’s the first sign of the old Keith he’s seen since Lance has spotted him. “Oh, well didn’t you know?” Lance grins. “My book’s called  _Conflict Resolutions: Talking It Out with the Galra Empire_. After it hits the shelves, I’m expecting a dramatic decrease in big battle fights.”

“I don’t think the Galra can even  _read_ English, Lance,” Keith counters. There’s a hint of a smile threatening to spill over his face.

“Books  _transcend_  language.” Lance rolls his eyes playfully, but pauses shortly after. “Or morals do. I don’t actually remember the right saying, but I do know I heard it sometime during daytime T.V.”

“You think that’d actually work?”

“We didn’t always talk like we do now,” Lance points out. “That proof alone shows my book has at least a pretty decent chance of working for our benefit. Or be on the New York Times Bestseller list. Either works.”

"Tell me about it after we get dinner," Keith says, corner of the mouth twitching upward. So Lance follows after him, because truthfully, they probably need this after what they'd been through today. 

Pidge and Hunk’s words echo in the back of his head like a mantra,  _Like he wasn’t telling us everything_. 

Lance nods, and tries not to think about the fact Keith’s been running so long, with no one able to catch up to him.

  

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Lance wakes gasping for air. His chest heaves with the attempt at maintaining air flow, of getting the oxygen to his cells, sweat slicked and soaked through his shirt. It’s silent besides his panted breaths and Keith rustling beside him, so it must still be late into the night.

Seconds pass by before he’s able to relax enough to sink his head into the pillow, to keep the rise and fall of his chest more rhythmic instead of erratic. He counts the pauses in Keith’s breathing to keep himself calm.

 _Inhale_ … one, two, three…  _Exhale_.

Everything about his nightmare is a blur, but it always leaves him with the same blood-rushed sense that he has to do something except he doesn’t know what. Each one feels more urgent than the last, like his unconscious is trying to let him know of something. Lance wishes whatever message is trying to come through at least made  _sense_.

Movement and the sound of the sheets rustling beside him grab Lance’s attention. Despite the cover of darkness, Lance can see the outline of Keith’s face, pulled together and scrunched in pain. He’s breathing hard through his nose, his body twisting with whatever’s haunting him in his dreams. Sweat has his hair sticking to the back of his neck and forehead— the urge to push back his hair, soothe Keith, is overwhelming.

So Lance does the next best thing. With a gentle hand, Lance shakes his shoulder, prodding him to wake him up from the nightmare. Keith shoots his eyes open, the whites of his eyes nearly glowing in the dark as his pupils dart from side to side.

“Keith,” Lance whispers, his fingers digging into his arm to steady him. Each of his muscles is tight, as if Lance is holding a replica of a person instead of someone real. “Keith, it’s Lance. We’re in your room. You were having a nightmare, but you’re awake now.”

Blinking once, twice, it takes a moment for Keith to realize where he’s with and who he’s with, Lance can see his eyes clear from the sleep horror effects slowly wearing off. Lance slowly lifts his hand away from Keith’s shoulder, in an attempt to give him space, to recollect, Keith’s wraps his hand around his wrist in a vice like hold, halting the blood circulation for sure, but effectively keep Lance from moving too far. He doesn’t pull him closer or move him away; he simply holds it in place. Swallowing hard, Lance slowly wraps his hands around Keith’s wrist as well as tight, his thumb brushing along the thin layer of skin above his racing pulse.

They stay held in place, watching each other in the dead of night. Lance counts down the time with the time of Keith’s pulse, feels the way it begins to slow and the way his breaths become more even. It’s a slow process, like waiting for first drops of rain on a cloudy day, but it’s worth it when the tension leaves Keith’s body.

Squeezing his wrist once, Keith lets Lance’s wrist slip through his hold and Lance mirrors him, the tingling sensation of the blood returning to his hand nearly overwhelming. His eyes scan the expanse of Keith’s face, never wavering. “Hey, buddy. You okay?”

Keith nods shakily. “Fine.”

“You had a nightmare,” Lance points out. Absolutely no way will Lance accept  _fine_  as an answer when Keith was clearly anything  _but_. “I don’t think that exactly qualifies the definition of ‘fine’.”

For a moment, Lance thinks Keith is going to bite back at Lance’s concern like he usually does. But maybe he’s too tired to bite hand Lance has laid out for him, or maybe he’s tired of pretending to be that person. “Well, I get them a lot now. This is as fine as it’s going to get.”

Honesty has a way being bittersweet. A truth always is always tougher to swallow down than a lie, but at least there’s no aftertaste stuck in the throat.

“I get that, man.” Lance’s voice is soft, quiet in the stillness of the night now. “It’s still okay to say it was scary though.”

Keith turns his head to face him, strands of his hair falling in his eyes without meaning to. He looks younger, more innocent here. “I remember. Is that why you’re awake now?”

Nodding slowly, Lance simply answers, “Part of it.”

“And the other?”

“Had a feeling you needed me.”

A muted chuckle escapes from Keith, instantly making Lance’s chest lighter. “Is that so?”

“It is,” Lance whispers back, like he’s sharing a secret. “I have a sixth sense about these types of things. Many people would call me  _gifted._ ”

“Don’t think you need a sixth sense to realize you’re needed.”

It hits him without so much as a warning. How Keith can say the absolute right things without so much as thinking them through; how he always manages to get it right when he doesn’t try instead of when he does.

Lance had needed those words without knowing. Warmth blooms in his chest like a candle first being lit. because he hadn’t realized how much he wanted to hear those words leave someone’s mouth didn’t ever stop the need for them.

“You really meant that, huh?” Lance asks. He’s close enough to see the way his brows furrow in confusion, the slight tilt of his head against the pillow. “About me being needed?”

“Yes, Lance,” Keith says, a hint of tired exasperation. His voice sounds sleepy now, the after-effects of having a nightmare seemingly ware off. Dulling his senses. “If I didn’t mean what I said, I wouldn’t say it.”

"People say things they don't mean all the time."

"I do," Keith says, quiet. "I trust you."

"I trust you, too."

When they’re both being lulled by the sounds of each other’s voices, where Lance is close enough to see the sun spots speckled along his skin like peppered kisses, how Lance can feel every exhale breathe along his skin, it's easy for Lance to remember how to get lost in a person.

Because Keith is beautiful like this. When he takes off his armor and acts like nobody’s watching— when it’s the two of them together. Something Lance had never known he wanted until he had a taste for it all on his own; now he’s addicted with it. There’s no glow of a monitor highlighting the cutting edge of his jaw, the sharp look in his eyes. Here he is, eyes closed like a dream, body soft and relaxed, voice as smooth as flying through clear skies.

Lance wants to kiss him. Every cell and nerve ending is pulled to him like an orbit Lance can’t escape from; all he can think of is how badly he wants to kiss him.

Instead, he inches his hand closer to Keith's and only stops when his pinky brushes against the back of his hand. For a moment, all he can do is hold his breath, stare at the ceiling until he feels Keith's hand slip into his. It's slightly dry, a little rough, but it has Lance's palms sweating at just the simple contact alone. Keith's thumb swipes over Lance's knuckles, and Lance squeezes his hand. 

He's not sure when he falls asleep, only that he does while holding Keith's hand.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

If they get in trouble, Lance is totally blaming Keith.

The Blade of Marmora or Voltron would be particularly happy with them, but hey, they’re young. Nothing screams reunion like a little sneaking through a ship they’re not supposed to be on. Heck, the two of them wouldn’t have even met if Lance hadn’t convinced Hunk to sneak out of the Garrison.

Besides, Lance has been itching to take a tour of the Blade of Marmora’s base of operations ever since he’d heard the words secret and headquarters back-to-back in the same sentence, so when Keith had offered him the opportunity and snuck into his room in the dead of night, Lance jumped for the chance.

Secrecy is the game here. A skill Lance has successfully mastered no matter what anyone else has to say—

“You’re going to get yourself caught,” Keith mumbles under his breath. There’s a hint of the challenging edge to his voice, the same one he used to throw back at Lance had teased him into competition. The rush of it still lingers now; Lance’s blood speeding just under his skin.

Lance turns back to him, his eyes glittering. “I don’t think you realize how much of a ninja I’ve become in your absence. I’m practically the master of sneak and strategy, a silent but deadly man of the night.”

There’s a raise of his brow, curious and teasing all in the same move. “A ninja, huh?” Keith’s mouth twitches at the corner akin to smooth smirk. It’s a good look on him. “Thought that was my thing.”

“Sorry, Mr. Touchy. Call me space double-oh-seven,” Lance throws back.

Keith tilts his head to the side, not realizing it only makes it  _that_  much more adorable. Jerk. “Who?”

“James Bond,” Lance answers without pause. He watches Keith, right until the moment the frown on his mouth transforms into the dawn of realization. It’s worth it. “No thanks needed, partner,  _you’re welcome_  for that info.” Lance winks. “Alright. I’m going in.”

“I didn’t thank you.” Keith rolls his eyes playfully, the muscles in his face working hard to keep the smile suppressed. “If you get caught, I’m ditching you.”

A long-winded exhale leaves in the most dramatic fashion Lance can manage, which is plenty. “You think you do a guy a favor and he doesn’t even  _thank you_. Where’s the appreciation? The thanks?” Lance gently scuffs his shoes against the ground, even if it only earns a squeak. “After all this time, Keith, you’re still leaving me out to dry.”

The corner of Keith’s mouth twitches into a crooked smirk. “Well, I’m not going to pour water on you now. I don’t have a cup.”

Lance moves his head side-to-side, followed by a faux disapproving  _tsk tsk_. A combination he’s managed to replicate due to the amount of times it had been directed at Lance back home. “Just wait until you get caught up in something and need me to rescue  _you_. You’ll be wishing you haven’t left me behind, buddy.”

A grin breaks out across Keith’s face before playfully shoving him at the shoulder.  _There he is_ , Lance thinks with pride. It’s not his job to make Keith crack a grin or to turn work-mode off and actually act like the kid he is, Lance knows that—still, it doesn’t stop the swell of warmth bubbling in his chest and the lift of his chin and think,  _I did that_.

It’s a good feeling. Especially with who the subject is.

“Break a leg, James Bond,” Keith says. “I’ll keep a look out.”

“ _Thank you_ , Keith. I’m going in.”

Now, Lance has no idea where it is they  _are_  going. Keith, being Keith, had been characteristically vague… when inviting Lance to sneak out after a supposed curfew that’d been implanted a couple of days of Voltron pitching its tent here.

(“A  _curfew_ , Shiro? We literally almost  _died_  a couple of days ago and we still have to go to bed at a  _curfew_?” “I don’t want Voltron causing any problems with the other leaders, Lance.” “ _It stinks_.”)

All Lance knew was whatever Keith had wanted to show him was on the Blade of Marmora Base ship, and they had to sneak past a couple of guards to get there.

Only a _couple_ guards, no big deal. None whatsoever.

If he gets caught, Lance is blaming Keith full-stop, even if there wasn’t a peep of protest from Lance. It’ll sound better to Shiro to let Keith take this one if anything.

There’s only two guards at the junction of this hallway to continue spy-walking, the occasional whispers of conversation bouncing along the silent space. The Blade of Marmora base is uncomfortably quiet— alien compared to the Castle with its constant hum and knowledge his friends are right around the corner. Creepy, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re official allies of Voltron.

Lance takes out a few of the alien fruits from a few days before, now hard with a squeeze of his hand, and winds up his arm from his pitching days against the corner of the wall with enough speed it bounces off it. Once the shuffling of feet happens a second later as planned, Lance takes off for the other side while the guards are distracted, Keith silent behind him.

They make it without a hitch, falling back into step with each other before turning the corner and walking face-first into a fully clad Kolivan apparently stalking through the halls like an ever-present hall monitor.

“Keith, and paladin Lance,” Kolivan states after a couple seconds past. Behind the mask, Lance can picture the displeased furrow of his brow. “You don’t have patrol duty, and it’s late.”

All Keith can do is stare, not like Lance can exactly blame him. Getting caught by a superior is heart racing enough, let alone one three times their size and radiates intimidation like an overzealous middle school P.E. teacher.

Lance gently nudges Keith in the side, bringing him back to the moment with ease. “Uh…” He can’t seem to keep his eyes on any one place, his famous lack of skill in coming up with an excuse or lie coming full force now apparently. “I wanted to show Lance around. He’s my friend, and we’re technically not on a mission, so.” Keith shrugs. “Thought it would be okay.”

“Hey, Kolivan,” Lance tacks on, lifting a hand as he greets him. At the lack of response, it’s obvious he should’ve stepped it up as a wave instead.

There’s an awkward stretch of silence that stretches after. Kolivan’s head tilts slightly between the two of them, but it drives Lance up the wall that Kolivan’s face is hidden. Hard to tell how a guy is feeling when there’s a mask covering him.

“I see…” Kolivan intends to literally kill Lance with how long he holds out his pauses, like keeping up suspense is a personal favorite past time of his. Finally, he adds, “The Blade of Marmora will always welcome a paladin of Voltron onto its ship. I entrust you, Keith, to make sure visitors are supervised.”

“Of course,” Keith answers. “I won’t keep my eyes off him.” There’s something about the way Keith utters those words, as if there’s a second meaning, that has heat prickle along the back of Lance’s neck without mercy.

Kolivan turns between the two of them before nodding sharply, and stomping off with the same amount of purpose and rhythm than before.

When he’s finally out of proximity of what Lance deems ultra-Galra-hearing-senses, releases a loud and dramatic sigh of relief, turns to Keith, and says, “Geez, how does that guy  _not_  make you get a spooky shiver down your spine?”

Keith shrugs. “Dunno.” He walks, and Lance follows after, nearly misses the lift of the corner of his mouth when he’s purposefully not turning towards Lance. “Maybe you’re just chicken.”

“ _How dare you_ ,” Lance exaggerates, arms waving and barely brushing against Keith’s arms. “Look who’s out here with you right now and didn’t ditch you after getting caught. It’s  _me_.”

“I knew you weren’t going to ditch me.”

“Oh yeah?” Great, now he’s curious. “How come?”

“You never did it before,” Keith answers without hesitation. “Even when I left Voltron, you still never ditched me. You were always there some way or another.”

They stop in the middle of the hallway, and Lance is left standing there staring at the back of Keith with the words echoing not just the hallways, but the expanse of his brain. It’s the first time Keith acknowledged the fact he’d left without the two of them turning it into an argument, or Keith avoiding the subject like it could burn him.

Lance isn’t sure what to make of this, or the fact that Keith’s voice is lilted like a thank you. Thankfully Keith is there, apparently punching a code in the keypad of the door they’re standing in front of, and the sound of the swoosh grasps Lance’s attention by his ear.

The room is vaguely familiar to him, despite the fact it’s about the size of a generous supply closet, completely empty minus a few cannisters of the Marmora symbol printed proudly across it. A sweet scent fills the room, subtle and not too overwhelming, almost like vanilla if Lance closes his eyes hard enough. There’s nothing exactly spectacular about this room, besides the tall observation window, nearly the entire size of one of this room’s wall, overlooking Naxzela and the billions of stars surrounding them.

It makes sense why Keith wanted to make the trip here with Lance. A quiet breathtakingly insignificant room away from the chaos and sounds of war outside.

“Well,  _finally_ ,” Lance says, albeit playfully, taking the first step inside. “Here I thought we’d never get here.”

“Shut up,” Keith replies, minus the bite. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

Lance shakes his head, and that’s the go ahead Keith needs. They shuffle in the room, the doors sliding shut behind them without pause. Shuffling around, Keith moves to get comfortable on the floor and Lance takes the hint and does the same, undoing his jacket for a make-shift pillow.

It’s not a lot of room, with the top of his head brushing against the cool wall and his legs bunched up by his knees until he places a foot on the wall across from him and crosses his leg. At an awkward angle like this, he expects not to see much, but the window is so large he has a perfect view.

The air stills as soon as they’re settled, the sounds of their breathing sifting through the wind as if instead of their own breaths, it’s the inhale and exhale of the ship, as if breathing in the stardust lingering outside.

Because Lance is Lance, he can’t keep his mind or body still for too long. Inch by inch, he moves his head where Keith’s heat radiates along the goose bumps of Lance’s bare skin of his wrists.

There, laying there, eyes closed and the light of the moon orbiting the planet below illuminating the planes of his face with a pale glow, is Keith. It’s a gravitational pull, tugging Lance in to admire and memorize the shadows cast along the sharp edges of his face, how his hair curls behind his ears. It leaves his stomach fluttering wildly against his stomach, as if his mind’s on a rollercoaster and the rest of him is racing to catch up.

Nobody should have the power to affect him this way, and yet Keith manages to do so effortlessly. Lance is starting to realize what this means, though he doesn’t believe he’ll ever stop getting used to it.

Without so much as a glance in his direction, Keith says, “I can feel you staring at me.” There’s a ghost of a smirk on his face, one that has Lance’s stomach and knees turn weak. “Creep.”

“Who said I was staring?” Lance counters softly, propping his head up with the palm of his hand. He refuses to look away, not when opportunities being together are so rare. “I’m  _gazing_.” Lance wiggles his brows, and Keith must have some sort of sixth sense if the mild snort of disbelief that comes after says anything. “Besides, if you didn’t want me to look at you, you should’ve made a ‘ _No Looking_ ’ rule. And do I see one such rule right now?” A beat. “Nope, didn’t think so.”

Keith manages to quell his laughter into a few huffs, eyes still closed. If he opened them, there’s no telling what they’d be saying. “Didn’t say I didn’t want you looking at me,” says Keith. “Just wondering why you were.”

“Dunno,” Lance answers. “Guess I haven’t seen you besides a screen in a while. Trying to make this more memorable.”

“You saying you miss me?” 

Lance rolls over to lie on his back again, hands clasped together over his chest and feeling the pound of his heart thrum against his chest, staring straight above at the ceiling. “Maybe something like that." 

“Just maybe?” Keith raises a brow. The familiar playful lilt of Keith’s voice has Lance’s stomach flipping. “That’s pretty disappointing, actually.”

“Disappointing, huh?” He’s careful to not let his voice crack, thankfully. Lance’s fingers tap rhythmically against the rise and fall of his chest, grounding him. “Should I have professed my undying loneliness these past many moons,  _My Dear Space Ninja_?” The pull of his mouth into a smile is unavoidable at this point. “How your absence left a hole in my heart?”

Keith laughs. “’Many moons’?”

“How my heart yearned for thee?” Lance clutches his chest with as much fervor as he can manage, turning his head towards Keith’s direction.

“We’re going Shakespearian now?” Keith’s smile is wide, chuckling softly. His whole face glows. “Interesting choice. Impressive.”

“That it was…” Lance trails off, catching Keith’s dark eyes shining from the window, his breath stuck in his throat the sight of him. “That it was some of the most sucky months since the first time we ended up in space together. How, surprisingly enough, I found myself missing you the moment you said you were leaving.”

The room goes silent. Keith stares at him inches away, dark eyes examining him like Lance would a puzzle desperately trying to solve. His throat goes dry, his skin buzzing underneath the surface as every second stretches to the point the barrier between impulse and common sense is paper thin, with Lance ready to charge right through.

Finally, Keith manages to ask, “Are you kidding?”

“No,” Lance answers, throat shriveling as his face heats up. “That… That wasn’t a joke.”

“Because I swear to God, Lance, if this is you still fucking around and it’s not true, it’d be the most fucked up thing you’ve—“

“Keith, I’m not messing around,” Lance interrupts, stopping him midsentence and catching his attention. “It’s the truth. The  _full_  truth. I promise.”

Probably the first time he’s ever used a full truth since he’s been in space. Everybody says it feels as if a weight is lifted as soon as you confess. But for Lance the truth had been a parachute he’d not cut the ropes of, leaving him crashing towards the ground.

Keith doesn’t respond. Instead his hands cup the sides of Lance’s cheeks and pulls him in for a kiss. 

As soon as Keith’s lips, slightly chapped and warm, meet Lance’s, he sinks into it, pulls himself closer until they’re chest to chest, unafraid of being greedy. .In the moment it feels as if it lasts for seconds, something so simple made timeless. But it ends as quickly as it starts, with Lance pulling back when Keith doesn’t move, swallowing hard with his eyes closed, a thousand apologies on his lips.

“I missed you too, Lance,” Keith mumbles against his mouth, puffs of breath hitting Lance’s lips with each word, “If that wasn’t obvious enough for you.”

“It is.”

Lance tugs him back down for another brush of their lips, then another, and another, Keith’s hair sifting through his fingers like water. He devours every kiss and touch as if it’d be the last. It’s been far too long since anyone’s held him in his arms as tight as Keith is, unwilling to let him go for even a moment.

Both of them desperate and hungry for the safety of each other’s warm, the pressure of fingers gripping, the need bottomless like an empty chasm. Even as the kiss melts into something sweeter, less ravenous and clawing, it fills a piece of Lance that had been missing for who knows how long. Forever maybe.

They kiss until their lips hurt, until they’re panting every time they pull apart and loose more with every breathless laugh at nothing, at everything. Neither of them care that their arms ache from holding each other up or how red and swollen their lips are.

All they have is right now, the two of them sprawled underneath an illuminated starlight, and that’s enough.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

No matter how amazing of an idea one might have in the dead of night, nine out of ten times the day has a way of dispelling that fact and saying, no, it was a terrible idea. Now’s not so different.

Having to wake up at the butt crack of dawn for training after a full eight hours? No sweat. A lack of sleep paired with the fact Lance and Keith hold important duties for the coalition is a different story; a lackluster one if Lance is being honest.

Every cell of his body feels weighed down and feeling as if he’s about to keel over any second now. The only retribution Lance has is it appears he isn’t the only miserable appearing one this morning once Keith enters his line of sight, dark circles and all.

Although miserable  _may_  be a bit of an over exaggeration considering the reason why they were both up into the night.

“Hey.” Keith yawns, stretching out his arm before a titular  _pop_  rings through. Satisfied he reaches a hand towards his utility belt, gripping Lance’s bayard before offering it to Lance with a  _definite_  satisfied quirk of his mouth. “You almost left that behind.”

Lance’s cheeks turn hot. He clears his throat, suddenly dry, and cringes at the sound of how the chuckle that follows comes out. “Right. This is important.” He lifts his bayard for emphasis. “Can’t just be leaving it around willy-nilly where anyone can find it.”

Keith laughs, a soft and private one that has Lance’s belly whirling. His hair sticks up at random and there’s drool still dried at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes are alight and focused on him. Despite how tired he looks, it’s the first time Lance has ever seen him so at ease, loose and happy. He looks at him knowingly, the smirk and residing bubbling laughter all but giving away every emotion he wears on his face, one that only Lance can understand.

A language only they know, while everyone continues to march along unaware. It makes Lance feel giddy, how he’s able to carve something out with Keith and have it be theirs.

The urge to reach over and take Keith’s hand is strong enough to leave Lance’s fingers twitching at his side. So he does, and is more than amused at the way Keith’s brows shoot up behind the fringe of his bangs.

“This is different,” Keith points out. His eyes haven’t left their intertwined fingers, not even when he curiously presses their palms together and squeezes.

“A  _good_ different I hope.”

“Something I could get used to.”

And though it may feel like it’s only the both of them in their own little bubble while everyone walks past, the reality is far more different.

It proves itself when Hunk and Pidge simultaneously yell, “ _KEITH_!”

The two of them zip past Lance without so much as a second glance, the speed of how fast they knock into Keith tearing apart their hands and nearly pushing Keith over. If they saw them holding hands, they don’t notice or don’t care, and Lance exactly blame them. As much as he hates to admit, he did get more than enough of private Keith time despite the fact he craves so much more.

Shiro, Allura, and Coran join them after once they return from their meeting with the rest of the coalition, and soon enough it’s beginning to look like a Voltron reunion. It’s difficult to remember the last time they were altogether like this; back when Keith first announced he was leaving for the Blade, which has to be months ago now. The sight of everyone smiling and huddled together, firing question after question with Keith desperately trying to keep up, creates a familiar ache in Lance’s chest at the sight of this. He wants to keep this image forever, memorize every crinkle of the eye and how it makes his heart feel as if it’s about to rip out of his chest. Missing a memory that hasn’t ended yet.

Footsteps round the corner before Lance has the opportunity to notice, too caught up in the sight before him.

“Sucks we have to leave so fast already,” Matt says, standing next to him. There’s a fondness in his eyes as he watches the scene before them, which leaves Lance wondering if that’s how he looks as well. Sadness included. “Feel like I  _just_  managed to spend some time with my sister, and now  _poof_. Done. Mission starting again.”

Lance’s eyes widen. “There’s another mission? Already? We just managed to do some heavy damage to the Galra only a couple quintants ago.”

“Yup. That’s how it usually goes around here. You win one fight, still have a universe worth left.”

Truth is, there is a universe worth of battles left to win. A universe worth of galaxies and planets Zarkon left scarred in his wake, and even worse, the ones erased from existence with only rumors and ancient stories whispering their history.

Lance had learned early on that a universe was infinite. There was no logical way to comprehend how astronomical the size may be that didn’t leave him dizzy with it. A universe worth of fighting was infinite, and the time to undo ten thousand years could be infinite, with Lance only having a finite amount of time to accomplish this. Math may not be his forte, but the answer is pretty clear.

It’s a fact Matt appears to have accepted. One that Lance struggles to come to terms with.

“When are you guys leaving?” Lance asks, desperate to ignore the onslaught of his thoughts with conversation that isn’t much better. “If non-classified personnel are allowed to know that is, big-shot officer.”

“ _Puh-lease_ , dude. You really think I have more authority than a paladin of Voltron?” Matt waves Lance off with a dramatic twist of his wrist, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards. It gets the desired result, Lance chuckling in amusement, before he settles. “In a few hours, I’m guessing. The Blade of Marmora want to go after this lead while we’re still hot, y’know? Galra being at their weakest is a huge advantage for us.”

Lance’s mouth turns dry. “The Blade of Marmora are in on this mission too?”

“Yeah.” Matt raises a brow towards him, curious. “Lotor gave us a lead in order to give us his trust, and all the leaders decided to send a small task force to intercept some Galra bases. It was Kolivan’s idea actually.”

Of  _course_  it was Kolivan’s idea. If anyone had come up with a plan to send their forces in right after an attack to chase information given by a known enemy, it’d be that genius.

“Doesn’t he know that there may be a reason why the Blade of Marmora is so thin? Some of the other Marmorites are still recovering from just the last mission.” Lance crosses his arms over his chest.  

“Look at you, Mr. No Filter.”

“I’m just saying what everyone’s thinking.”

“Touché,” Matt says. “But hey, how about a little piece of mind? I trust Pidge enough to fend for herself, but knowing she’s got guys like you watching over her makes me feel a lot better. I promise I’ll look after Keith, too.”

“Keith?"

Matt’s eyes twinkle in amusement. “Dude, not saying it’s for the same reasons, but I’m obviously going to miss Pidge and I saw you two earlier. With the hands.” He wiggles his brows, and Lance’s cheeks immediately burn. “Yeah, I know you’ll be missing him too. So this is my guarantee Keith Kogane look out oath from yours truly, Matt Holt.”

If Lance could fling himself out of the nearest airlock, he would. No questions.

“The full names makes it sound pretty official, so it’s appreciated,” Lance finds himself saying, the muscles in his cheeks beginning to strain. “And Keith’s known to be pretty reckless, so having someone besides me looking out for him would actually help  _me_  out in the stress department.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.” Matt’s voice turns serious, like a flip of a switch. The sound of it already has Lance’s stomach churning. “Especially after our last battle.”

It takes Lance a full minute to process the words; separately they all make complete sense to him, but all of them together has Lance working a mile a minute to comprehend all of the possible meanings it could have.

Lance opts for directness. “What do you mean by ‘Especially after our last battle’? Did something happen to Keith?”

“You don’t know.” Matt’s face pales. “I thought Keith would’ve told you…”

“Told me what?” Lance doesn’t mean for his tone to come off as harsh as it was, but he already feels on edge. All he needs is an  _answer_.

Because the universe loves to make any and all things difficult for him, Kolivan steps into the room. The sight of him seeps all the warmth and life from the room in an instant.

“Keith, there’s a mission briefing you need to attend.” Kolivan’s gaze lands on him like a magnetized pull, everything about him oozing out an icy coldness.

Nodding, Keith accepts the mission without a second thought. Lance’s stomach turns to stones, that state of finality that seems as if the world is collapsing into you.

Only after does Keith glance at Lance, eyes on him and impossible to read, and Lance can’t speak.

Matt seems to take notice. “You should ask him yourself, man. Give Keith the chance to tell you before our mission.”

Everything is running a mile a minute, difficult for Lance to keep up with anything with the world around him. This isn’t supposed to be happening right now, he thought they’d have more time.

Some hopeful, childish part of him believed Keith would stay.

Hunk calls him over then, finishing off a conversation Lance couldn’t follow even if he tried, “Come on in, Lance! One more Voltron group hug for the road.”

One more Voltron group hug, that he can manage. Lance takes a few steps in before arms pull him in and he smiles, the same strained pull of his lips as the first time they’ve seen Keith off, the same bundle of nerves buzzing just below the skin. Except this time, he has a reason to, but Lance is still left in the dark like before.

Across from him, Keith and Lance’s eyes meet. The bright smile on his face melts into something strained, or maybe for the first time, Lance realizes it’s fake.

He wonders what would make Keith stay if a kiss wasn’t enough.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Lance hasn’t been able to think. After Matt’s revelation, Lance’s thoughts are spiraling, circling into a consecutive of absolute dread.

It doesn’t help everyone else has continued back into normalcy while Lance holds onto this knowledge. The Blade of Marmora and the Galra Resistance has been following Lotor’s lead, following into the heart of Galra territory to tear apart strongholds where Galra from the evacuation could’ve ran to. It’s been radio silence since the last time everyone had been all together, and it’s making Lance twitchy. As if he’s constantly on edge, waiting for the message Keith is gone.

Because at this point, he can certainly be, without telling anyone, and no one would be none the wiser. The knowledge of this has been an anchor, dragging Lance down into a pit of terrible endless thoughts and images.

Lance knows he should tell someone. Anyone. All he has to do is confess to someone about what Keith had planned on doing the last battle, what he had nearly done. It would be so easy to walk up to someone and shed everything’s been torturing him for the last few days, but he doesn’t know how to bring something like this up. Well, he does. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t know if he should tell someone at all. Not without getting a chance to talk to Keith first. He wants to hear Keith’s side, although, Lance isn’t sure how’d change anything.

“Hello, earth to Lance,” Hunk says, snapping his fingers in front of Lance’s face to catch his attention. Last resort. It didn’t occur to him anyone had been talking to him. “There you are, dude! I’ve been asking you to hand me supply crate for the last thirty ticks.”

“Oh,” Lance replies, his voice sounding slightly dazed.

It takes him a moment to remember where he is, what he’s doing. They’re in the Interduoadhasit System, delivering supplies to war-torn planets considering joining the coalition. Normalcy. Or what it’s supposed to feel like. Something Lance has been unable to think about in terms of everything else going on.

Lance heaves up his supply crate filled to the brim with medical supplies, which Hunk takes rather eagerly. “Sorry,” Lance says, because he has nothing else to offer for an explanation. “I’m here.”

“I’d sure hope so,” Pidge says. “It’d be pretty abnormal to have an astral projection experience while you’re awake, and by abnormal, nearly fucking impossible.” After a pause, Pidge nudges him gently in the side with a bony elbow with a playful smile on her face, voice light. “But if you ever do astral project, you’d let me know, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance says, forcing a smile on his face. “For sure, Pidge.”

Pidge and Hunk share a look together, a private conversation Lance can’t read, but say nothing else. If they notice Lance’s strange behavior, they decide to let it slide. It’s not like they’re mind readers.

Except, if he can’t talk about something’s bothering him to his best friends, how can he expect anyone else to?

Lance clears his throat, garnering both of their attention in a heartbeat. A sense of warmth flows through him, but he shakes himself off, focuses on the important task at hand. If anyone would know what to do about this, it would be them. “Hypothetical question time. You guys ready?”

“Shoot,” Pidge answers, while Hunk hesitantly says, “Sure.”

“So, if you knew your friend was doing something reckless and dangerous, hypothetically speaking,” Lance is clear to add on, to which they both nod in response. “And you’re the only one who knows, and you want to tell someone because how it’d help them, but you’re not sure if you should without talking to that friend first… What would do?”

For a moment, there’s only silence. Only until Hunk breaks the silence, and with one of the most serious expressions on his face, does he ask, “Lance, is there something going on with you we don’t know?”

“Yeah, Lance,” Pidge adds. “You’ve been acting twitchier than usual.”

“Hypothetically speaking here,” Lance says, eyes on the both of them. “If I said yes?”

“I think you should tell someone then,” Hunk answers, serious expression on his face. “Hypothetically speaking.”

“I wouldn’t,” Pidge says. “What gives you the right to tell someone’s secrets when they’re not ready?" 

Lance winces, because’s exactly what the problem was in the first place. How Keith had stopped speaking to him because he pushed on a spot he wasn’t supposed to. 

Sighing, Lance merely asks, “Even if telling people would help save them?”

Pidge pauses to think, brows furrowed under her glasses. “Lance, I’m fifteen,” she finally says. “That’s the best advice I’m going to give you.”

“I think it’d help if you gave us the full context,” Hunk adds gently. “Are you going to end up telling us in a non-hypothetical sense, buddy?”

“Probably not.”

“Well again, hypothetically speaking,” Hunk starts. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and a good heart. You’ll know the right thing to do.”

Maybe he does. Maybe in order to do the right thing, he has to endure a little pain to get the results he wants in the long run. He’d rather have Keith angry with him and alive, rather than dead because Lance didn’t follow his instincts.

“Thanks guys,” Lance says earnestly. “You helped me out." 

It’s settled then. Lance has a plan, and he’s going to confront it head on. For Keith’s sake.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Fact of the matter is, Lance hadn’t thought this through. Or maybe the real problem was that when it came to Keith and his wellbeing, Lance didn’t care to.

Either way, it’s Lance’s fault.

As soon as the mission’s completed and they return to the Castle, Lance rushes towards the Communications room, bathed in darkness and consoles chilled to the touch, and types in the coordinates of the Blade of Marmora’s vessel. Part of Lance knows he shouldn’t be attempting to contact them, not when they’re deep in the hear of Galra-occupied territory, but he can’t wait. He knows in the deep pit of his gut that if he does, there’s a chance he’ll be stuck waiting for a call he’ll never get.

It starts with these facts: Lance knows Keith made a choice that day, back at the Battle of Thayzerix, back when he jumped at the option to join the Blade, back when Lance had tried to open him up only to be met with stubborn walls, and whatever the choice he made, it was going to get him killed.

Except here’s the problem, because there’s always a problem whether it be a surprise Galra attack or a distance Lance can’t cross, this is a feeling, and feelings can be explained away. All the logic in the world to try and make sense of Keith or the way Lance inexplicably knows him could explain that Lance knows Keith is in trouble.

It’s because this is a war. (Yes.) It’s because you’re afraid. (Yes.) It’s because you miss him. (Yes.)

It’s because you love him. 

All these reasons, and still none of them credible enough to be taken in a way that isn’t brushed off to the side as a normal worry, or a truth that needs more evidence; something that’s real.

The call continues to search the galaxy for coordinates, Lance’s body rife with tension, the air palpable with stillness. Lance chews on the inside of his cheek until he tastes the copper on his tongue. It’s impossible to stare at anywhere besides the black screen, the thin white lines circling around each other as it struggles to connect, but he has to watch the communication lines to make sure they’re not being traced or intercepted. Droplets of sweat slide down his temples.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” Lance mutters under his breath like a desperate prayer only Keith could answer. He can’t stop from stimming his legs, his whole body shaking from it. “Keith, please pick up. I  _need_  you to pick up.”

This could be a long shot, Lance knows. All of this worry and stress and weirdness from the last several months could be a stream of coincidences, that much he knows too. Lance could be wrong about everything, the insecurities, the doubt, the ideas he holds in his core, and he’d own up to it all without a noise of complaint if that meant that Keith was okay.

He hopes to god he’s wrong.

The call’s about to ring out, he can tell from how long he’s been standing here and from the way his legs begin to ache, but he stands straight and clear without so much as a thought that Keith won’t answer. He wouldn’t, not after everything between them.

On the last ring, Keith’s face pops onto screen, and Lance’s chest gives way from the pressure of holding his breath.

“Lance?” He’s out of breath, face flushed despite the fact the lights are out on his side as well. It takes Keith a moment to gather his focus, his eyes wide with panic and skittering around to make sense of this, as if trying to figure out which emotion to settle on. “What happened? Did something happen? Are you  _safe_? ”

Lance doesn’t know whether to burst into a fit of laughter or to turn around and ask him the same. There’s so much Lance wants to do now that he can see his face, hear the words leave past his lips in real-time. Confess how much Keith means to him. Bite down the urge to beg, and ask him to come home. Paint him a picture of how it could be if the two of them were together, breathing the same air, working side by side everyday.

He wonders if Keith wants any of what Lance wants. And because he catches himself wondering, Lance forces himself to say, “Tell me if you’re okay.”

The question seems to puzzle Keith. He opens his mouth as if to speak then clamps it shut as if changing his mind, repeating the process a couple times over. “What the hell are you talking about?” Keith finally manages to settle on, the words not as harsh as he tried to make them, forced.

“It’s a simple yes or no question, Keith,” Lance says. “Are you okay? Check yes, check no.”

Keith stares at him like Lance is speaking some alien language, or if he’s suddenly grown two heads. “Is this some sort of game? You’re not supposed to contact unless it’s for emergencies, we’ve been over this, Lance.”

“Not a game, Keith.” Lance takes a seat, already preparing himself to settle in for the long haul. It feels like a long night’s coming. “Matt said something happened during the Battle of Thaycerix with you, but he told me to ask you himself. It seemed pretty serious.”

The air turns tense afterwards, the silence palpable. They stare at each other for what feels like the most endless seconds of Lance’s life.

Keith clenches his jaw, the vein jumping underneath the skin in a way that Lance wishes to be out of deep thought rather than the first sign of Keith running. “What did he tell you?”

“Enough for me to have the urge to call you in the middle of the night to check if you’re okay,” Lance answers, the muscles shoulders up tense until he breathes out a sigh and feels the stress pour out, the serious façade crumbling along with it. “If you think I’m mad about you leaving, I’m not. I just… I care about you, Keith.”

It’s subtle, but it’s there, the subtle shift from walls up defensive mode Keith showed front and center to the boy with wide eyes and cracking the gate open. Enough to open himself up for whatever Lance has to say.

A sign of trust.

“Matt told me to ask you myself,” Lance says when Keith still stays quiet, “So I’m asking you.”

“Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t thinking?” Keith asks, glancing down at his thumbs smoothing over his palms, as if he’s been caught sticking his hand in the cookie jar. Its one of those few times Lance truly notices how young Keith is, when the hard edges and mask comes down. “Because lately, that’s what I’ve felt like. Not thinking, or maybe… Not thinking enough.”

“Not thinking never really was a problem for you. I mean, sometimes, but not always.” Lance stares at him. “You rushing head-first into a plan you made up on the spot, on the other hand, seems more like your style.”

“Not going to disagree with you there,” Keith says, and Lance pointedly notices he’s not about to agree with him either.

Lance sighs. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

It’s as much as a confirmation to the fact something horrible happened to Keith as Keith will offer him, but that’s not the end of it. If Lance has to stick his hand down his throat and pick out the words himself, he’ll do what he has to.

 _This isn’t a game. This is a war_ , a voice is saying in the labyrinth of thoughts and memories.  _This is life or death_.

“Just tell me what happened,” Lance pleads, ignores the sound of the vulnerability in his voice and refuses to break eye contact with Keith from the other side. He can’t let Keith keep avoiding this, not when it’s affecting his missions, affecting his life. “I’m not going to be mad, Keith. Please just stop pushing me away and  _let me help you_.”

Keith’s mouth forms into a firm, tight-lipped line. His body is still. Lance has to make sure the connection or screen hasn’t frozen in place, but Keith blinks and Lance relaxes in a simple heave of his breath. The anxiety continues to build into the room, blood heating and pulsing, and Lance feels the longer he holds his breath the sooner his lungs are about to pop like over-inflated balloons.

Then Keith heaves a breath and Lance finds himself breathing in time with him. A beat of silence. “I was going to crash my ship into the Galra Cruiser to save Voltron.”

Brain comprehension goes null for a few seconds.

Lance can admit he’s never been able to effectively deal with bombs of any kind—explosive, truth, or otherwise. Now’s no different. It takes a few moments for his brain to restart and comprehend the weight of Keith’s words while they drag down towards the pit of his stomach leaving him dizzy, as if up is down, red means blue, and gravity ceased to exist.

“What?”

“Voltron was stuck because of the shields. I heard you all thought the Coms and we were running out of time,” Keith says, body stiff and words carefully free of any emotion. Robotic in his retelling as if they’re back in the Garrison giving a mission report to Commander Iverson instead of talking to Lance like he’s Keith’s friend. “I had a choice to make, so I made one. My ship was just about to collide in with the ship until Lotor destroyed it.” He takes a deep breath. “That’s why Lotor’s here under our protection. Why I’m out here with the Blade of Marmora following a lead instead of hanging back. That’s the whole story.” Keith’s face remains carefully expressionless.

Except Lance notices the glassy look in his eyes and how his bottom lip juts out, wobbling a bit. The picturesque look of someone desperately holding back.

This is it. A balancing act where there’s no good options other than to keep tip-toeing along the threading tight-rope, balancing the weight of a body on unsteady legs. One wrong step and they’ll both be hurdling down to drown in fire.

“You didn’t say anything.” Lance finally settles on this, on the softness of his voice, barely above a whisper. As if he’s kind and gentle enough he could reach through the screen and pull Keith his arms from sheer want alone. “We could’ve never heard from you again, Keith. There wasn’t even a goodbye.” His throat feels tight. “You could’ve  _died_.”

Keith swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat like its stuck. Blinks back the tears in his eyes.

“I know,” Keith croaks out, then clears his throat quick like it didn’t. “I was there, remember?”

“Do you though?” Lance counters, quick. His throat feels too tight, the words forcibly squeezed through in a desperate balancing act of wanting to say so much without overwhelming Keith, not when he’s finally beginning to open up with him. “We could’ve lost you, Keith. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking it was the only way to save you! To save all of you,” Keith snaps. Like an animal caged into a corner, bared teeth and too loud of a bark to mask the fact they’re afraid. It’s the same look swirling in his eyes right now. “And I was fucking terrified. I thought it was the only fucking option to save everyone.” A beat. “I’d rather it be me than all of you.”

And Keith, Keith who’s only ever shown his anger and his sharp edge of his jaw and fire in his eyes, finally looks up and lets Lance see him behind the rows or mirrors. The fear fueling the body forward like an instinct, or a pulse—anger masking the reason behind why Keith runs.

“It wasn’t. You throwing your life away for the sake of everyone else isn’t the only option.” A familiar feeling builds in his chest, but it isn’t anger. Lance knows anger, and this isn’t it—this is fear at the knowledge of what he almost lost, what could have happened, and Lance’s feelings mirrored in Keith’s actions. An intrinsic knowledge he wishes he didn’t have. “You don’t even  _care_  about yourself, Keith.”

There’s silence. Keith stares at him for a moment too long, mouth firm and unblinking, leaving Lance shivering in his seat.

“And what about you, Lance?”

That’s not the response he’d been expecting. Although when it comes to Keith, he probably should stop expecting anything.

“What  _about_ me?” Lance asks, disgruntled. “I’m not the one who nearly blew my own ship up — we’re talking about  _you_.”

“No, but you threw yourself in front of a bomb in the first week of being here,” Keith snaps back. He doesn’t stop going, not when Lance’s face drops at the fact Keith had thought to mention at all right now. “You’re the first one to run ahead of the team when we’re in battle. Which, hey, you almost got killed when you did that.” It’s as if he’s reading off a list of everything reckless or impulsive thing Lance has ever done, as if he’d memorized it for this moment to throw it back in his face. “You said you don’t think you’re important enough to be on this team to me to my  _face_ , Lance.”

Lance is frozen, his entire body too still, eyes unable to tear away from the serious lines of Keith’s face. Each word drives into Lance’s memory like a pressure point, specific memories flashing behind his eyes, all of them reminding him of how painful it had been in this moments. How terrified he was. How terrified and still true all of is.

It feels as if the world’s flipped upside down with a simple swing from Keith. Something he didn’t have to try for. White-hot shame burns in the pit of his gut, in his face, but he can’t stare away from Keith. It makes no sense for him to bring this all up unless it was to humiliate Lance, to remind him of all his weak points and bring them up into the open in order to end this argument before it’d begun.

Except doesn’t make any sense. Not for the two of them, especially not now. Lance thought they were  _friends_ , they’d move past winning and losing; they were growing closer.

Lance had thought—

“You don’t care about yourself either,” Keith says, in a much more quiet tone than before. Softer. “It’s not fair to ask me to put myself first, before all of you guys, when you don’t do it for yourself.”

For a moment, the words echo in his ears, distant, heard, but unable to process. It’s as if every main function of his brain had fried out as soon as Keith mentioned all of, out loud, and Lance is left standing there with an expression of a man trying to solve the mysteries of the universe. As if something finally clicked into place for the first time and Lance finally has a chance to understand.

Lance clears his throat, after realizing he had been staring in silence for too long. He says, “You’re the only one who’s noticed.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never had anyone…” Keith bows his head a little, looking almost sheepish. “Care about me like you do.”

All he can think of is Shiro and Keith at the Garrison, but the thought is quickly vanished away when he realizes Lance has never had this either. There’s his family back home, and the rest of the team, but no one like Keith. No one who weren’t obligated to by a role in Lance’s life, or because of a mutual duty to defend the universe, but someone who could’ve easily done the bare minimum and chose not to. Even if it was against their nature to do so. Even if there was no reason to do other than Keith simply wanted to.

A soft, warm smile blooms on Lance’s face, all the pain and fear melting away, and merely says, “There’s a first time for everything.”

Keith smiles softly, mirroring Lance as he does. They may not have fixed everything, not by a long shot, but it’s a step in the right direction. Steps for them to be more open, to maybe have a chance to work and talk through this together. To help each other because they both care, and they’re not afraid to hide it anymore.

And maybe Keith can finally come home.

“ _Keith_.”

Everything in the room seems to be sucked out of the room with nothing left but a cold chill and the sinking feeling in the pit of Lance’s stomach at the sound of Kolivan’s voice. The color drains from Keith’s face, the smile, the light and slight happiness in his eyes replaced with a similar thought. They’d been caught. Lance can hear the loud echoing footsteps approaching, as if Kolivan was purposefully trying to take his anger out already.

“Lance McClain?” Kolivan somehow sounds worse now he’s in frame. There’s a curl of his lip, fangs exposed, reminding Lance of a vicious attack dog before it tears into you. Everything about him is stiff, tight, as if his muscles are straining with the effort to not explode. “Do either of you know the amount of danger you are putting the Blade of Marmora right now in? Do you? I was alerted to the incoming signal  _from the main control room_.”

“Kolivan—“ Keith starts.

“Enough,” Kolivan snaps, and Keith’s mouth shuts up instantly, shrinking away guiltily. There’s an awkwardness in the pit of Lance’s stomach as he views this, stuck on the other side of a screen, reminding him of watching a parent scold a child with the knowledge of he shouldn’t be seeing this, but he is, and he wants to do something, but he  _can’t_. “The Blade contacts Voltron. how it works. And it’s not for catching up and talking like the both of you are now. You could’ve gotten us  _killed_.”

Lance swallows hard, heart beating in his throat. “I needed to talk to Keith abo—“

“Whatever the reason, you put us in jeopardy with the Galra. We’re in a Galra occupied zone!” Kolivan’s voice only continues to grow louder and louder with momentum. If Lance had any thoughts about what Blade of Marmora training was like, it was quelled away immediately. “You could’ve gotten us  _killed,_ and it would’ve been  _your_ fault.”

“We weren’t tracked,” Lance tries desperately to reassure. He’s never done well with being yelled at, but he stands his ground, because finding a way to talk to Keith had been important. “I made sure the communication link and coordinates were clear and secure! I triple-checked—“

“How long has this been going on?” There’s no answer. Kolivan snarls, “Answer me so I can clean up  _both_  of your messes.”

“A few months,” Keith answers. “Lance is right, we’ve been secure about this.”

“It doesn’t matter how secure either of you are, you brought up an unnecessary risk. You chose this mission, Keith,” Kolivan points out, staring Keith right in the eye who only stares back at him, unblinking, face emotionless. “Turning back now is a death sentence.”

The silence follows confirms this. Though Lance has a coordinate location of where they’re located, he knows there’s no way Keith could make it back without the Blade’s ships and resources. If Keith decided to leave, he’d no longer have any access considering how spread thin they are. And Lance knows they can’t go back for Keith without going into the heart of the Galra. if Voltron goes back in after how quickly they were nearly killed, where the Galra have the home advantage, it’d be the end of the war.

If Keith had some semblance of a choice, he’s stuck out there on his own, and Lance can’t do a single damn thing about it.

“This will be our final transmission,” Kolivan states. “The mission is at risk, and we are not taking anymore unnecessary risks by contacting Voltron.”

Panic rises in Lance’s throat, but before he can open his mouth to speak, the signal’s gone and Lance tries pressing the controls, anything to bring back an image, a sound, trying to find Keith’s coordinates. All there is empty space and a deafening silence, while all Lance can do is feel the words die on his lips as he stares back at his reflection in the now black screen.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Lance wakes upright and barefoot. Red towering over him is just an added bonus to how unnatural this morning is turning out to be.

This feels like a dream. He blinks the sleep away from his eyes, twisting his neck this way and that to make sense of where he is; Red’s hangar. There’s no memory of him walking from his room to stand before her, eyes baring down at him, answering a call he didn’t know had been ringing.

If this were a dream, Lance wouldn’t need to ask if it were.

“Red,” Lance says, nearly breathless with it. It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts, to feel what she’s feeling. The buzzing in his brain and itch in his fingertips tells him enough. “ _What’s wrong?_ ”

To no one’s surprise there’s no simple answer, and Red drops her jaw down to the hangar floor instead.

With a speed that has Lance tripping over his own feet, he straps himself into his paladin suit. His pulse picks up momentum to where Lance can only focus on the quick beat of his heart, faster and faster, a soundtrack that’s begun and only Lance can hear, building up to something big he can’t see.

Once he’s in Red the energy increases ten-fold, as if he’s stepped right into a crime scene after everyone’s torn the house apart searching for clues, for help, for anything. It’s heavy and thick in the air, making it impossible to take a full breath.

Lance takes his seat and alerts the Castle of what’s going on as he’s scrambling to figure that out himself. The alarms flash and drench the cockpit in a sickly red, alarms blazing in his ears and making it impossible to think about anything for longer than a second before it whips away from his grasp.

“Something’s wrong everybody.” Lance flips a switch, sees his positioning on the visual map that springs forward in a blinking red light. “Follow my signal. Keep up.”

Red lurches forward towards the hangar exit. The force of it has Lance thrusted backwards and pressed into the seat, struggling to activate the press down the tracker activation sequence. There’s no possible way for Lance to send their local coordinates at the speeds Red is currently reaching, and he couldn’t afford to wait for the others to wake up and hold himself back to allow the rest of the team to chase after the both of them.

Lance knows either way he wouldn’t be able to convince the rest of the team of why they need to go and why they have to at the dead of night. Any logical reason he can come up with is that he knows in every vein and every muscle of his body that there’s something wrong, somewhere beyond the streaking stars and passing planets.

If Lance were in their boots and heard those words oozing from his mouth, he wouldnt’ve believe himself either.

It’s clear they’re getting closer when Lance has freedom to move again. He’s unable to recognize which system they’re in, or even where he is exactly. From his radar, he’s unable to locate any electrical entities or organic life compounds anywhere nearby. Even the Castle is nowhere near them or able to be located on any of his maps. An icy shiver runs through his spine at the realization he’s alone, no allies or teammates here to back him up. Empty space.

Lance swallows dryly, forces himself to rearrange his thoughts into a plan of action. “I don’t see anything, Red.” Despite the fact he doesn’t expect a vivid response, talking out loud is self-soothing, allows him to organize the tangled web of his mind and keep himself calm.

She turns her head slightly, as if trying to turn her head back towards him. There’s no way it can be done, but Lance feels her eyes on him, frantic and urging.

“I trust you, Red. Never said I didn’t.” It was a worthy guess, but a right one from the approved hum he senses from her. Lance still needs more to go on. “What exactly are we out here looking for, girl? Danger, I get, but I’m still not sure what’s so dangerous.”

There’s a low rumble deep within her chest, before he hears it: a soft call, a noise he’s only heard one other time before with Red. A mother’s call.

 _Keith_.

Static crackles to life over the communication system. His stomach swoops at the slice it cuts into the silence, hands reaching out to strengthen the signal. Voltron must’ve caught up with him, relief rushing through his veins as he struggles to connect. Words struggle to formulate in his mind when all it’s filled with is Keith, and Keith in danger, and how much time Keith may have left.

Until an object collides into Red, the entire mass of her shaking. Lance grips the controls and spins red away from another dark, metallic object incoming. There’s thousands of them, floating across the viewport, too small to be an asteroid field, and making it all but impossible for Lance to see ahead. A few of the pieces are metallic and reflecting, other pieces are scorched and burning, tinier fragments scratching along Red’s armor.

Lance’s mind goes blank once he realizes why the image is so familiar. It’s floating debris.

The closer he gets, the external temperature readings skyrocket. Blocked by floating pieces surrounding them in a graveyard of destruction, he can see the fierce glow and light grow stronger. He finally makes it past the last of the field, and his stomach falls to his feet.

Before Lance is a Galra Cruiser being torn down the center of the ship, a mass of fire so violent it scars his eyes. Ash sprinkles against the viewport as ships flee from the other side of the ship in drones.

Shoving the pulleys forward, Red blasts through the airfield, leaving behind a trail fire in her wake. His fingers shake as he locks onto the faint signal in hopes of strengthening it ten-fold, scanning through the expanse of the ship for the beat among the flames.

All he can think is,  _Keith’s in there_.

“Keith?” Lance calls out to the vastness of the ship, his fingers gripping the controls so tight he’s sure his knuckles are as pale as the ash surrounding them. “Is anyone there? It’s Lance. I’m a paladin of Voltron and I  _can’t_  help if  _you don’t answer me_.”

There’s radio silence. Lance holds his breath with each passing second, his lungs screaming the longer the silence passes. All he needs is a whisper, a crackle of static.

Lance should’ve done more. If anything happens, he knows he’ll never forgive himself.

“ _Vol_ …  _Is that_ —“

His heart stops; Lance would recognize that voice anywhere.

It’s Keith’s voice, tinny and punctuated by static, but it’s his voice nonetheless. He must be far out of range still, so Lance lurches forward as he catches the last part of Keith’s transmission. “ _Hel— We need— Are going to_ die _!_ ”

“Keith _?_ ” Lance jumps in his seat, his whole body thrumming with the effort to keep his heart from beating out of his chest, capturing the signal. He just has to keep the line open, allow Red enough time to triangulate? his location onboard. “Where are you? Talk to me, my man, let me know if you’re alright before I start freaking into the mic over here and ruin my intro.”

The mood lightening, as expected, falls flat.

“ _Lanc—_ “ His name cut off into static again, and Lance has to bite back the scream thrashing against his throat. He needs “ _Stuck in— Overrun with—Fire_.“

“Fire?” Lance waits a whole second before reaching out again. “Keith, answer me. I know the comms are being an ass, but I need to know you’re out there still.”

With a screech of tearing metal and explosive roar, the front of the ship erupts into an explosion of rage. The force it pushes against Red, leaving Lance desperate to stabilize her from crashing into the waste surrounding them.

It takes a moment for Lance to gather his bearings, desperate to salvage the connection. But the airwaves have gone cold, not even the white-noise of static crackles against the dead air. His heart sinks once he realizes what this means: communications are down. If there’s any chance of contacting Keith again, it’ll be when Lance breaks through the flames and drags him out of the fire.

Red’s lights flicker, a growl rumbling through the metal of Red’s armor. The holo-map pops up on the headboard, an exact schematics of the Galra cruiser before him, a blinking red dot dead center of it.

 _They found him_.

Lance dives in the abyss of the torn ship and makes a promise, to Keith and himself: “Don’t worry, buddy. I’m coming for you.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Fire and blaster shots light up the hangar bay, but Lance turns Red to the side, her armor skittering across the hanger floor shooting sparks and crushed Galra bot parts flying into the air like a fireworks show. Roaring beams of metal and debris litter around them, blocking them in with no means of escape.

Trapped in a disintegrating time bomb. Typical day for a Voltron paladin.

Lance straps himself out of the pilot’s chair and sprints out. He raises his bayard, already prepared for the remaining Galra bots. One shot, two shot, three shot, down. Taking the first step out of Red is a shock to his system. While Red may have the ability to manage best with extreme heat temperatures, Lance unfortunately does not possess the same ability. His paladin armor had been tailored to withstand the heat, but Lance doesn’t know for how long or how much. Only a few seconds out, and Lance can already feel the beads of sweat forming on his body like a second skin.

Lance needs to go, and fast. “Be ready to leave when I come back with Keith or any other survivors,” he says to Red. He feels rather than hears the warning growl, the one keeps his pulse high and the weight on the tips of his toes. “We’ll be back soon. I promise, gorgeous.”

Breaking out the virtual map, he starts running in the direction of the main signal of Keith’s location seems to be located. Travelling deeper into the pit of flames, the smoke makes visibility and hearing are all but unreadable. If there’s debris in front of him, or any surviving Galra from this cruiser, Lance won’t have a clear eye ahead of him.

All Lance can do is keep moving forward; ignoring the flames licking at his feet and the collapsed beams he make out through the haze of smoke. This is almost like the virtual training, except it’s Lance with no one covering him this time. Making a mistake now would be it. No redoes or second chances. Game over.

It takes him a second too long to realize the path away is a wall of fire and turns his body to the corridor before he can run straight through. His shoulder crashes against the wall, a sharp bolt of pain leaves him distracted from the collapsing beam crashes against his helmet, leaving him smacking into the ground. A gasp has his body all but lurching his body off the ground, as his head pounds mercilessly against his skull in time with his labored breaths as if his head is feeling far too full, as if it’s building and building to explode. Each attempt at getting up has Lance clamoring for something to hold onto, the full of the ship teetering back and forth as if he’s on choppy waters, crying out in pain once he realizes the piece of metal balancing him is burning right through his gloves into his skin.

Heaving every breath, desperately trying to stand firm on his feet, he notices it. A tiny hissing sound could barely be heard from the roars of the flames and the clamoring pulse in his skull. Impossible to ignore is the long, branching crack of his helmet.

“Oh no,” Lance breathes out, voice trembling. Lance’s insides turn cold. A strong, loud and dangerous, as he brings his too-numb hand to the deep jagged crack struck on his helmet, clearly rings through his ears.

If the clean oxygen is escaping his suit, it’s only logical to assume the toxic air is able to breach through. For a solid thirty seconds, Lance can only stare at the wreckage laid before him. 

Here’s a fun fact: the human body can survive without oxygen for a solid eleven minutes.

Lance grabs the virtual map and his bayard, and makes a run for it, ignoring the pulsing of his head and heart and the burn in his eyes as it threatens to overwhelm him. There’s no time to focus on the fear creeping up in every nerve of his body. Not when the time crunch has suddenly been cut in half.

“I’m coming, buddy,” Lance says, his breath heaving with the effort to run without toppling over. “Hang in there.”

Corridor through corridor, he chases the source where Keith should be, and Lance can already feel the effects of the cracked suit. Now his hair is soaked to the brim with sweat, sticking to his forehead as if he’d ran a marathon instead of only a few halls. His breathing is becoming more labored, his nose and throat swollen, his body hacking with coughs as if his lungs are trying to eject the smoke’s attached to him. Each step leaves him dizzy and wanting to stop, but he fights through it, because he already knows if he stops he and Keith are both dead. Seconds feel like drowned out minutes, as if time has started going backwards instead of forward.

Focus. All he needs is one foot in front of the other, push through the haze gathering in his mind. Every step brings him one step closer to the blinking red dot, the treasure at the end of the map.

As clear as day, Lance hears the crackle of static come to life and every hair at the back of his neck stands straight up.

“ _Lance._ ”

It’s like a ghost of a whisper brushing against his ear, so close it had Lance turning to try and catch wind only to be met with emptiness. There’s no mistake in his mind that he’d heard a voice despite communication being down for hours. Except, that doesn’t sound right either. It feels as if he’s  _just_  started running.

Lance attempts to make sense of the jumbled puzzle of his mind, but finds it nearly impossible to connect a train of thought past a few sentences, his brain fuzzy as if it’s been left on a disconnected station.

The air. The first sign of smoke inhalation is confusion, then headaches and coughing fits, lungs burning for air, and…

He forces his feet to keep moving, one foot in front of the other, simple.

Staring ahead, he sees something white and blue and doubling before his vision. He runs towards it, the static in his communication continuing to crackle along his ears. He’s getting closer, and with each step, he sees it, the outline of a man.

“Where are you going, Lance?” The voice comes through again. Lance stretches his arm out and turns the man around and Alfor’s face, highlighted in white and blue pixels, turns and faces him— face twisted up in pain. “Your hand is burning.”

Lance tears his hand away from Alfor and sees the scorch marks on his glove, how it’s nearly melted through. He stares wide-eyed at him, head pounding, desperately trying to make sense of what his eyes are seeing. “You’re not real.”

“If I’m not real, then how come I’m here, speaking with you?”

“Because I only see you in my dreams, or in Red… “ Lance shakes his head as if to rid the smoke from his skull, stopping to take a breath low to the ground. If he opens his eyes, Alfor won’t be here. “Right now, I’m in a blazing Galra ship in the process of being torn apart. Not checking the usual criteria.”

When Lance opens his eyes, Alfor still stands, unmoving, his cape billowing against the smoke. “All those times I’ve come to you before, and you haven’t heard me.”

“I called out to Red,” Lance heaves a breath, “You just happened to show up instead.”

“And why do you believe that is?”

"Because the universe thinks my life is a huge joke." 

“No, paladin. I was trying to warn you,” Alfor reassures in a voice that would make anyone believe everything’s going to be okay. “You’re dying.”

Room spinning, Lance hacks another cough and glances down at the dot. It’s closer than before, except Lance doesn’t remember taking all these steps to get here. He has no idea how long he’s been on this ship. “The smoke,” Lance gasps out. “Seeing things. Running out of air, aren’t I?”

“If you die, Voltron dies with you,” Alfor says instead of answering. He’s so calm, voice devoid of any emotion, like he has no idea he’s engorged by flames. “You can save them still if you run back.”

Lance shakes his head violently, worsening the ache in mind. “I’m here for Keith. I’m not leaving without him.”

“What about them?”

“Who’s them?”

Lance snaps his head up, but Alfor’s disappeared. Instead standing among the smoke, the ash builds together to form several dark silhouettes. Shadows of people instead of the real thing. Except Lance doesn’t need to see their faces to know who he’s looking at.

It’s like a physical drop in his stomach, bile burning the insides of his throat. There’s no way it’s them. It’s a smoke-induced hallucination. Lance knows this despite the way his brain is burning and the toxins in the air poisons his mind and swirls it around into mush. Lance’s family is on Earth. They’re not in space on a burning Galra ship.

“Lance!” Voices he knew before voice all in unison, despite the ashen shadows having no mouths. All of them are facing towards him, screaming at him. “Come back to us!”

“I will,” Lance yells back, tearing his throat up as he does. He wipes the fog and sweat off of his helm and activates the map once again, and there it is. The red dot so close and so far away. “But I need to save him first. I have to save him first.  _I_ did this.”

All of them tilt their heads to the side simultaneously, their voices like bees buzzing through his skull, shooting sparks along his spine. They stare him down, accusing. “Did you burn this ship down?”

Every call the two of them had ever made, Lance had thrown them in the face of danger. They knew the risks, but Lance should have known better than to get caught up in a dangerous game of pursuit. All this time Lance may as well have been screaming to the Galra to find the one he loves and take him, signing off Keith’s death certificate with a click of a button.

This is what he’d wanted after all.

“I may as well have.”

Confessing doesn’t make the ache in his chest any lighter. It only makes the reality all the more agonizing.

“What if you die?” They ask him, voices trembling in tune together like a siren song, pulling him back towards reason and safety. “You’ll never come back to us.”

The wall of fire roars, hungry and only a few steps behind him. The blinking red dot from his virtual map catches his eye again, unmoving and only a few steps away now, calling to him. When Lance glances back up, the ashen shadows continue to stare back at him like a fence, keeping him back. Keeping him from moving forward.

“It’s worth the risk,” says Lance, “I have to try.” 

Without a second thought, Lance sprints through them into the flames, not looking back.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Back at the Garrison, they ran drills for situations like this, strategies and procedures in order to survive a crashing ship, or how to reroute a course if hit by meteoric object, or how to make use of a survival pack. Nowhere did those drills include rescuing your sort-of boyfriend from an alien race while piloting a ten thousand year old war machine in the shape of a lion on your own.

Professor Iverson was right. Simulations were nothing compared to a real crisis.

Lance had always excelled at strategies, given the chance to think with a clear mind and an entire team. Now, he feels as if he’s barely managing to keep his body intact.

As soon as Lance enters the room, he crashes to his knees and tears his helmet off, and retches every bit of last night’s dinner on to the floor so hard he can’t breathe. He gasps after, coughing with a force that has his chest aching, his lungs heaving with the effort to bring in the cleaner air from the sealed doors.

It’d be so easy to give in, to shut his eyes and give his screaming body a moment to rest when the sound of muffled grunts and shifting metal upon metal scratches his ear drums, like a building’s foundation crashing into itself, all-encompassing and intensifying.

The sound is close-by, the only noise in the room besides the remorseless? flames from behind the doors. He strains, forcing himself up on his knees, eyes shot open to search for the source of the noise.

“Keith,” Lance calls out, his voice croaky and vocal chords scratching against each other, barely even recognizable to his own ears. “Keith, are you here? It’s me. I’m here.”

There’s the familiar sound of movement from across the room, metal shifting as debris clangs to the floor. Lance heaves himself up, clenches his jaw tight once his hands remind him how burned they were, and ducks underneath the maze of metal poles and rafters and metal spiking through the caved in ceiling and careful to not trip over the mess of glass littering the floor.

“Lance?” Keith’s voice calls behind a pile of concaved flooring from above, hoarse and strained but most importantly  _strong_.

He moves the first pile of debris, and Lance feels his stomach drop down to his feet. There’s Keith, pinned underneath the weight of a concaved roof, covered from the waist down. He pushes against the steel with a yell, the veins jutting out from his shaking arms only to having lifting it enough to move barely enough to shift his body before it falls back to where it was, panting heavily afterwards.

All attempts to free himself rendered useless.

The situation hits Lance like a ship-crash to Earth. He sprints to Keith’s side without a thought, ignoring the aches in his body as he crouches down next to him and supporting the back of his neck. “Keith, I’m here, don’t worry, I’m here.” Gently, Lance pushes back the fringe of his hair away from his eyes with a free hand. “Time to get you out of here, huh?”

Keith glances up towards Lance at the sound of his voice, staring at Lance with wide eyes and pupils blown like Lance is a dream. His pulse races against where Lance’s hands are pressed, his fingers stinging with something wet sticky staining his fingertips. 

It’s really no surprise how quick everything’s gone to shit.

“You always know how to make an entrance.” Keith stares at him, his eyes soft and shining before releasing a strained breath. “Thought something happened. That you weren’t coming…”

Lance swallows dryly, desperate to keep the panic from his voice. “Why? ‘Cause it took me a while to get here? And here I thought I was racing against time itself and winning.”

A wheezy, amused huff escapes from Keith, until the movement of it has the metal shifting and Keith cringing from the weight. Their bittersweet reunion’s cut short before the rubble settles.

Lance peers over the mountain of rubble, desperate to find the spot he could move without crushing Keith in the process. The most dangerous game on Jenga he’s ever played. “Where is everyone?” Lance asks, glancing over where the debris has him pinned down. 

“Kolivan freaked after catching us talk to each other,” Keith says. “Swore we gave away our location. He ended up taking us off course, and we ran into this Galra ship.” Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he glances up at the ceiling instead of at Lance directly. From here Lance can see the pain in his eyes. “Then we were intercepted. We had to fight our way out, but I came back for Kolivan.” Keith swallows hard, staring at Lance with wet eyes. “Didn’t matter anyway. Kolivan’s dead.”

The news settles in the pit of his stomach. A bitter truth Lance has to swallow, a weight he has to add. Lance may not have always been a fan of Kolivan, but knowing he’s gone leaves him with a nauseating, sinking feeling in the pit of his belly.

“I’m so sorry, Keith,” Lance says.

“Everyone else left.” 

“ _What_?” Lance snaps, an uncharacterically white-hot rage filling through his entire body. 

“It’s the Blade of Marmora’s way. You save yourself and leave those who aren’t strong enough behind,” Keith says. Keith’s face is as hard as stone, but once he finally looks in Lance’s eyes, it begins to crumble. His eyes are wide and afraid, his hands at Lance’s face trembling. “I tried to come back for Kolivan.”

Lance stares at him for a moment, before following his gaze. There’s another pile of rubble across the room, nearly blocking the door. Something dark oozes out of the rubble, nearly liquid black, but if Lance looks right, he can see the shades of purple. Kolivan’s fingers twitch underneath the rubble, though the rest of him is frozen like something out of a disturbed painting.

There’s air and smoke swirling in his head, dizzying Lance with it. He has to swallow back the nausea before he spills everything from the night before onto the floor.

Lance opens his mouth to speak, but Keith cuts him off, “It’s been an hour since he last…” Keith takes a slow and steady breath in his nose, too calculated to be anything else but an attempt as composure. It doesn’t work. “Since he last made a sound.”

The realization Keith had seen this, had heard his mentor’s agonized sounds and words, the bones cracking underneath the weight of the metals and compartments of the ship leaves Lance feeling as if he’d been dipped in ice water.

“Lance.” Keith’s voice cracks. “I want to go home.”

There’s no brave soldier here who’s unblinking in the horrors of war, only a terrified boy instead.

“I’m going to bring you home, Keith. Okay?” Lance cups both of his cheeks, their foreheads bumping together as he holds Keith close. “I promise.” 

Keith gives a slow, sure nod. He grips Lance tight, and Lance misses the pressure of his fingerprints as soon as he tears himself free. There’s still a fire roaring outside, with too much to lose with so little time they have. Dark smoke fills the room, dimming the lights and dancing around them like a taunting shadow. Lance has to get him out. Fast. 

He will not watch the boy he loves turn to ash. Not when Lance can take him out of the flames.

Lance touches the metal and hisses when it burns his hand through his gloves aren’t gloves anymore. It’s still hot to the touch, although he’s not sure if it’s from the fire or the explosion, but it doesn’t matter either way. Steeling himself, Lance forces a mantra to repeat in his head like war cry:  _Burns are temporary_.   

He grips the piece of metal, ignores the singing of his hands and the overwhelming smell of burnt meat hitting his nose, and pushes down with all his strength. His arms tremble with the effort, but he can hear the groan of metal sliding against each other — moving with the force of Lance’s might.

“ _Now_ ,  _Keith_ ,” Lance yells, the veins in his neck and forehead jumping.

In his peripheral, Keith pulls himself out with the brunt of his elbows, grunting in time with each pull of his body. It’s so quick it almost looks effortless. Keith taps Lance’s foot, panting too hard to speak, and Lance lets the weight of the wreckage fall, the movement forcing it to pile into where Keith had been pinned only a minute ago.

Lance heaves him up from under his arms; not missing the way Keith can’t put any of his weight into his right leg. There’s no time for him to make any of this easier on either of them — they have to be out. Lance forces his helmet back on himself and with shaking hands presses Keith’s mask to cover the rest of his face.

“There’s a crack,” Keith points out, hands reaching out to press his hand against his helmet. “You can’t go out there.” 

“Got any better ideas?”

Keith opens his mouth to protest, but Lance is already moving, Keith limping by his side as they pass the rubble of Kolivan’s make-shift grave. Lance can feel the way Keith’s body turns, his gaze lingering, but tugs him along. There’s no time to argue, no time to mourn.

Outside smoke billows over their heads like a second layer of atmosphere, blocking any view that isn’t inches away. There’s no flames from what Lance can tell, but the heavy smoke has spread far beyond the non-flammable parts of the ship, already seeping through the tiny crack of Lance’s helmet, brain dizzy with it.

Breathing was already difficult before, but now he can feel his lungs turn black. They need to make it back to the hangar, and fast.

Keith knows this, from the way he’s limping on his injured leg from the way his free hand grips his bayard in his hand while the other leans on Lance for support. With every step comes the bitten down grunt of pain or the fact he nearly collides into Lance, but he keeps pushing forward, never once uttering a complaint.

It’s easy to forget from the distance between them to the bickering and disagreements, how great of a team they really are. How Keith leans into him when Lance pulls, and Lance follows when Keith sprints.

When they get out of this—no ifs, because to  _hell_  with that—Lance will tell him all of this. How hard they fought against a burning galaxy to be with each other.

All they need to do is reach the end of this hallway, and the hangar will be on the right, homebound. Escape just at the end his reach.

They don’t even see it coming.

Shots fly through the air, plasma and laser cutting through the smoke like a light show. Among the smoke have to be more than a few Galra drones, some disfigured or two melted together to form into one, forcing their way through like they don’t have a clue they’re patrolling a ship on death’s row. Lance’s brain struggles to make sense that they’re real, that the shots zooming past his head is dangerous, until he’s slammed to the floor by Keith.

Together, lying flat across the floor unmoving, they’re able to make use of a singular panel fallen from the now-exposed ceiling shooting sparks this way and that, no larger than the length of Lance’s head to his collar-bone. The shots continue to fly without aim, an occasional stray shot’s heat skimming near the top of his head.

“I can’t tell how many of them there are over there,” Lance shouts against the tornado of noise encasing them. “We’re pinned down!”

“A dozen at least.” Keith hasn’t let go of his side since they’ve been down. “Too many of them.”

“Well we can’t just stay sitting ducks until they leave.”

Lance hikes his bayard over the make-shift cover and desperately attempts to stabilize his rifle turned sniper. It wobbles, unable to still, and when Lance puts his eye to viewport he can’t make sense of up or down from the smoke and the way his vision doubles and manages to turn the hallway into a twisted funhouse tunnel.

He shoots and thinks he manages to hit one, only to have a stream of fire scorching right at him. Ducking down, Lance is left panting as they zip past his head, except this time, they don’t stop. 

Metal scrapes against the floor, and Lance’s veins turns to ice at the realization: they’re moving into attack.

There’s no possible way either of them could take out a squadron of Galra bots on their own. Not in the condition they’re in: staining the ground below with blood while their lungs cough up ash and smoke.

A rumble from behind them catches their attention, shaking the ground beneath them like an earthquake. It settles, and with a quick glance behind them the secure doors are beginning to melt through. The fire must have spread far past the hall before the room Keith had been trapped in. All the exposed wiring from the caved in ceilings and walls must’ve been a leaking dynamite trail for explosions to come through. And here it is now, caught up to the both of them. 

They hadn’t made it as far as Lance thought, let alone past a few feet from the room Keith had been trapped in. 

“I don’t think we’re going to make it back to the hangar.” Keith’s chest rises and falls in rapid fervor movements, his hand cradling his ribs like something fragile.

“Not unless the hanger comes crashing down,” Lance says, breathing hard, not missing the sound of the march headed towards them. It’s harder to ignore. The high screech of metal scratching across the surface of the floor cutting through the fire has a way of garnering that type of attention.

“Just shooting or hoping the roof caves in on us, ” Keith deadpans, “We’ve got great options.”

Despite the sarcasm dripping from Keith’s words, Lance isn’t sure ‘great options’ isn’t the case here, at least not separately. Apart there’s no chance in hell any of these plans have a leg to stand on, but maybe together, there’s a tangible plan amidst the chaos surrounding them and the mess of his mind. 

Together there may be just enough of a half-baked plan to work from and work their way from there. It’s not like either of them have any wiggle room in determining the best option.

“I think I’ve got an idea.” Lance turns his head to the side, gaze meeting the two Keith’s going in and out of his vision. “Not exactly the best plan I’ve ever had, but it’s worth a shot.”

“No time for best plans,” Keith counters. “We just need  _a_ plan.”

It’s a simple go ahead Keith offers, a simple nod of approval, despite the fact Lance hadn’t needed it but wanted it all the same. If this ship goes down, he wants to make sure they go down together. Despite the blanket of smoke, that much is clear. 

Lance takes aim with his gun on his shoulder and Keith on his left. There, in the mess of fire and lasers slicing through the smoke, the exposed panels and wiring flickering to life. He takes a deep breath. Focus. No time to miss. 

Keith’s body under his own as Lance shuts his eyes after he pulls the trigger. The last sound is the hail of the ship crashing in a hail of debris around them.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Little droplets of warm liquid cool his singed cheeks. Maybe he’s fallen asleep outside like he always used to do back on Veradero beach, but the smell of burning metal and gasoline snaps him out of that split second of escapism and back to the totally screwed up situation.

Someone sniffles. There’s something bony shaking through his hair in an awkwardly soothing motion. Lance blinks the heaviness out of the lids of his eyes and forces his eyes open.

It’s hard to see, and to breathe. There’s dust dancing around Keith, ash stuck to his cheeks, beams of light sifting through the debris encasing the both of them in a make-shift tomb. Hard to tell if it’s from the mixture of toxic gasses or the deliriousness of having just woken up post-explosion, Keith is still probably the most comforting and painstakingly beautiful boy Lance has ever seen.

Only when Lance shifts to try and sit up does Keith notice he’s awake, and quickly wipes at his eyes shifts the dirt in a different spot on his face. “Hey, Blue,” Keith says groggily. It’s a nickname Lance can’t remember Keith ever using for him, but it’s already one of his favorites. “Be careful getting up. You’ve been out for a while.”

“Look at you being a gentleman.  _Ow_.” The pain in his side worsens as he sits up, as if the movement is tearing himself in half, even with the gentle assistance of Keith’s hands keeping him steady. “A while? How long is a while?”

“Few minutes here and there,” Keith answers. “Quick nap.”

Lance nods and his head soars. Dark spots creep along his vision, the ultimate head rush, and even as he steadies his breath to keep himself from passing out again, there’s the aching pulse ranging from the inside of his head to behind his eyes. He bites his cheek so he doesn’t cry out.

The hold Keith has on him tightens, keeping Lance steady as his body rides out the waves Lance is sure can’t be solely from the ship itself. From the way his brain rattling against his skull like a car wreck and the taste of bile against his tongue, he’s sure he’s nearly made the record for consecutive concussions in a row.

“Thought I said careful,” Keith murmurs as he steadies Lance, face taking a second too long to come into focus. His eyes are wide and bright red, burning as bright as the rest of him probably. “Hey, talk to me...”

“’M fine.” They both know he’s lying, but neither of them make an attempt to call Lance out on it. Not like it’d change how his pulse tastes. “We just need to figure a way out of here.” 

“There isn’t one.”

“What?” Lance blinks, once, twice. “Of course there is, Keith. We just have to figure it out. I’ll figure something out.”

“ _Lance_.” Keith stares at with unblinking wet eyes. “We lost. Look around us. Kolivan’s dead and there’s no way out of here.” Keith sighs and rests his head against a piece of sheet metal. Exhaustion tinted with the dying light of giving up.

“No, nope, we’re not doing this here. Not now,” Lance says, cuts Keith off before he can go any further down the road of self-pity and pulling up his regrets. “Save your breath for  _after_  we’re back at the Castle and we tell our amazingly heroic story of how we made it out of here.”

“I’m sorry. For getting us here.”

“Stop it.”

“Just—“

“ _No_.”

For a moment, they simply stare at each other, Keith memorizing his face and Lance searching his. It’s a dark comedy. It’s a Shakespearean play meant for the two stupid lovers who thought they’d make it out of a graveyard alive. Call them one of the classics.

It practically writes itself: Two people who loved and loved, drowning in flames among the stars.

Lance shakes his head, ignores the blood rush as he drags himself towards Keith and holds his face in his dirty hands and stares him down, foreheads pressed against each other. “We  _are_  getting out of here, no if’s and’s or but’s about it. We’re doing this together.” Someone’s shaking, and Lance can’t tell who, so they only hold each other tighter. “If anyone’s getting out of here, it’s us.”

“You sound so sure.”

“We’re a good team, remember?” Lance says without pause, and doesn’t miss the way Keith’s lips part for a moment. “And I’m not letting either of us die here.”

He’s always left wanting to say more to Keith. They’re always running out of time.

“Keith, are you with me?”

“I’m with you, Lance.”

The two of them pull back, Lance lifting his wrist and thanking whoever’s looking out for them the explosion didn’t singe the controls from the virtual map. The 3-D imaging pops forward, cutting in and out as if it’s living on it’s last sips of the battery, and Lance sighs with relief when he finds the two red dots blinking close to the airlocks on the top-left corner of the cruiser’s map.

Lifting their heads, Lance raises a brow, and Keith nods. They’ve got a plan now.

“Flinging ourselves out of an airlock,” Keith mutters. “Sounds like a plan I’d make. Not really one at all.” 

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Lance gives a half of a grin. “And I’d say we’re pretty damn desperate.”

They grab their gear and crawl out from the caved out debris holding them in. He’s barely aware of the pieces of metal scraping across his armor, or the fact he’s breathing in his own sweat and ash stuck to the back of his throat. Every part of his body screams, his side feels as if it’s ripped apart every nudge forward, but Lance keeps moving. If he stops now, if he gives in to his trudging body and rests his eyes from the unending dizziness for even a second, he knows he’s not getting back up again.

Lance lifts his head. It’s impossible to tell from this angle where the airlocks were, let alone how much further they have to go, but top-left is all that’s ringing in his head. A part of him wants to call out to Keith and make sure he’s all right, but he needs each labored breath he can hold onto.

It’s hard to breathe. Lance knows the desperate rattle in his chest when it comes to him, knows there’s only so much left before the pounding in his head gets worse. All he sees is a sliver of light, and pushes through. They burst through to the other side of the wreckage, falling to the floor with a clang and gasping breaths.

“I can’t wait until it stops hurting to breathe,” Lance gasps out. “This  _sucks_.”

“Not really the best.” Keith’s on his feet first, and reaches over to grab Lance’s arm to help him up. “Come on. Almost there.”

For a split second, he’s got two feet planted on the ground and Keith’s face in his line of vision, and the next he’s stumbling, the room dark and whizzing around him, nearly bringing Keith down to the floor again with him.

“Woah, Lance!” Keith struggles to hold him up by his arms, barely keeping Lance standing with what he knows has to be is a little less than dead weight. He wants to push himself up, make an effort, but it feels as if his entire body is giving out all at once. “Lance, what the fuck is wrong?  _Talk to me.”_

“I feel dizzy,” Lance says, a little delayed, a little lame. He feels sick. “It’s a few more steps.”

“Just wait a second.” 

Keith’s hands are quick to move along his body, and when they brush against his side, his body screams. Blood fills his mouth from how hard his teeth clamp on his cheek, and he realizes then something is very wrong.

It’s worse than a punch to the gut. His hands are cold. The air and heat stolen from him in an instant.

“Your suit,” Keith says. Those two words, echoing in Lance’s ears like a final rite. “Lance, your suit…”

Lance looks down as if disconnected from his own body, and sees Keith’s hands doing their best to stitch back the ripped pieces of fabric together, and what he assumes to be his blood dripping onto the floor. It has to be his. Keith’s suit is fine.

Hard to stare a death sentence in the face and try to convince each other it’s not. That’s probably why this silence feels infinite.

They’re teenagers, not stupid. 

“What are we doing?” Keith asks, and Lance can’t answer him. Wouldn’t even know how to answer him if his brain could stop racing for more than a second. “Stay with me, Lance. Don’t check out on me here.”

“Like I said,” Lance starts, swallowing down the lump in his throat, “I’m not dying on this ship.”

It’s one of the more final things he’s ever said.

Keith looks like he wants to argue, but his mouth closes the instant he changes his mind. He closes his eyes, breathes in deep, the strain of it painful to watch until he’s staring back at Lane with his face as hard as stone. “I managed to last out there for a while before with a torn suit. You hold onto it tight, keep as much air in as you can, and don’t let go.”

“Okay,” Lance says, though he’s anything but. “Let’s go.”

Lance can’t walk more than a few steps without stumbling over, and ends up leaning against Keith as he walks them towards the emergency airlock.

“Red’s out there, right?” 

Lance nods.

“Good,” says Keith. “We’re okay.”

“Keith, I—“ Lance hates the way his voice cracks, but he can’t help that. Can’t help the way he shakes either. “You know Red and I don’t… What if she doesn’t come?”

“Hey, look at me.” Even as Lance turns his head towards Keith, Keith’s hand slips over Lance’s helmet where his cheek would be. Lance swears he can feel his warmth seep through anyway. “You can do this.”

“I know, but—“ 

“You believe in everyone, okay?” Keith stares at him with an intensity that leaves him breathless. “I believe in you more than anything, and I’m not going anywhere.” 

Any argument dies on Lance’s tongue. He’ll give credit where credit is due, Keith always has a way of leaving him speechless.

They punch in the control panel buttons, and Keith places a hand on the sensor for the airlock door to slide open for the both of them once its fully pressurized. Lance leans against the wall, holding the torn fabric of his suit between his fingers as he tries not to jump out of his skin. Keith ties his utility belt against Lance’s, both of them holding onto the false hope a single knot will keep them from floating away.

Silence fills the room. All they can manage is to stare at each other. Nothing more to it then that besides a raise of a brow from Keith, and a slow nod back from Lance. Keith punches in the code, presses his hand to the second panel. 

A hiss and the airlock door slides open, the two of them flung out into the dead of space, screaming and spinning and screaming.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

The stars swirl together until there’s nothing left but darkness.

It’s familiar. Comforting. Lance feels as if he’s underwater, deep within the ocean and floating through darkness with only a memory of a worry and his body at ease.

He can’t tell when he stops moving. Only that when he does, he feels the cold seep away from him as if he just stepped in from the outside, a rumble in his chest telling him he’s home.

Safe.

 _Fear not, young paladin_ , the old Englishman says,  _You’re not done yet_.

 _Paladin?_  Lance wants to ask, does ask. He knows that voice!  _You saved my life. You saved my life! I owe you my life._

_I talked. We both talked. You listened._

There’s that rumble in his chest again. The old Englishman is gone, but Lance is still warm.

The voices are clearer where he is. Worried whispers and rushed words he can’t make clear, as if they’re all underwater. Is he drowning?

“Lance, you’re safe now,” says a father’s voice. But that can’t be right. That doesn’t make any sense.

A brother’s voice, “I got you, buddy. You did good.”

 It’s bright wherever he is. Blinding even though his eyes are shut. If this were heaven, he’d know. His dad would be here to greet him.

“Please wake up soon,” an Englishman daughter’s voice.

A sister’s voice, “We’re right here.”

“ _Lance_." 

A hiss in his ear, lulling him to sleep. He’s tired, and doesn’t mind the chill in his skin.

Deeper to sleep.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

A shiver runs through him once the cryopod releases him, warmth embracing him like a sunrise. Limbs stiff, he nearly stumbles, but the warmth— arms, he realizes— tighten their hold on him, and he eases into them without a second thought. It takes him a moment to unstick his eyes, a hangover side effect from cry sleep. A chorus of familiar voices come echo around him, coming into focus, and when he opens his eyes he’s greeted by the smiling faces of his team.

“Afternoon everybody,” Lance greets with a tired smile on his face, voice scratchy but otherwise fine. There’s no burn when he speaks; his words slipping past his throat are smooth like honey. “You guys finally throwing the parade I’ve always wanted?"

“There’s our sharpshooter,” Shiro says, his arms crossed and a proud smile stretched across his face. “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad, not bad,” Lance replies, nodding a little. “No longer feeling like my head’s an overfilled balloon, so’s a good thing.”

“’s always good,” Keith says. “No need for an airheaded Lance.”

Snapping his head, he realizes whose arms he’s been in this entire time. Keith, standing there, giving Lance a small smile like they hadn’t been through hell together. But the moment’s short-lived when short arms wrap around his middle, and he’s being pushed into Keith’s side, Hunk’s wet face pressed to his cheek and sniffling.

“We’re so glad you’re okay, man!” Hunk sniffles them, squeezing the group easily without so much as a second thought. “Everyone was worried sick. I know you had to go chase a feeling or whatever but still.”

“Yeah,” Pidge mutters into Lance’s shirt. She sniffles. “Hunk was worried about you.”

“We  _all_  were,” Allura chimes in.

With a noise of surprise she’s tugged into the group hug easily, and suddenly Shiro’s in too, with Coran coming in last for the most dramatic effect. All of a sudden Lance is too hot, sweating in the middle of a group hug meant for him. After everything, he thought he’d be tired of the heat, but turns out he only craves more of it.

“Let’s get you something to eat, huh? How does a feast sound?” Shiro offers. “We’ll save the parades for when Zarkon’s finally defeated.”

“Can’t beat the sound of.”

From the gargling sounds at the mention of food, Lance’s stomach seems to agree. They have an in-between lunch and dinner meal (“Dunch? Linner?”) with Hunk whipping up some of Lance’s favorite foods, a few side helpings thathappen to be Keith’s favourites, and milkshakes from Kaltenecker (with Allura and Coran forlornly glancing at them before taking a cup for themselves). It’s rather uneventful for how meals tend to go around here, but Lance doesn’t mind. After the eventful days, weeks, months piling onto each other, it’s nice to a break with the people he loves.

It’s serene. Lance has a hard time keeping himself upright and eyes wide open, his muscles and joints still sluggish from the cryopod. It tends to happen when he’s in for longer than a few days, and from the way the burns have all but subsided and the way the others refuse to leave his side has anything to say about it, Lance knows it was anything but short.

Even Keith, who’s never been one to hover, refuses to let anything over a few inches separate them. His eyes are locked onto him like a spotlight, catching every movement, every hitch in his breathing or pause in his movements. Taking a single step warrants Keith to place a hand on the small of his back, supporting his weight without being asked. Lance doesn’t mind. If anything, Keith only makes it more difficult to stand straight.

The whole team ends up watching an old Altean movie Allura and Coran had apparently found during one of their reminiscent tours through the Castle. Though the plot is easy to fall along, Lance finds himself dozing, his body pressed against Keith’s side, Keith’s arm bracketing him behind the couch, his fingers brushing along the bump of Lance’s shoulder.

If Lance feels grateful the movie’s ended, he doesn’t show it. He accepts and gives back his line of hugs, embracing everyone, telling them goodnight and he’ll see them bright and early for training tomorrow. It’s only him and Keith left. Alone for the first time since flinging the both of them out of space.

Keith’s hand burns through his shirt into Lance’s lower back, sending a spark through his spine like an electric wire. “My legs don’t feel like Jell-O anymore now, y’know,” Lance teases despite the heat rising to his face. “I’m more tired than anything else. Technically, you’re off Lance duty.”

With a raise of his brow, walking Lance along the path back to his room, Keith replies easily, “Lance duty implies I’m obligated to do this.”

“So what you’re saying is you  _want_  to take care of me,” Lance says. There’s still the edge of teasing to his voice, before the realization hits him maybe s exactly what Keith had wanted to imply. “Oh.”

“What I’m saying is,” Keith begins, waiting for the swish of the doors to open before finally stepping through Lance’s room. It’s different having him here— it comes with the fact this is the first time Keith has willingly step foot in here. “I know you’re clumsy, and I don’t want you to fall on your face as soon as you got out of the cryopod.”

“Sure, sure. Thanks for the lift, knight in shining red leather.”

“Right.” Keith snorts, then pauses. “Well, goodnight. I guess.”

Lance stifles the disappointment in his gut, and smiles. There’s so much left unsaid still floating in the air around them. It’s okay though; they have more than just secret conversations at nights, now, they have all their days left to talk now. Lance had made sure of that.

“Goodnight, Keith.” Lance smiles fondly at him, but he’ll let him go. Knows he’ll come back this time. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Keith nods once. For a second, it seems as if Keith is about to turn to leave, but thinks better of it and stops in his tracks. He’s facing Lance then, soft and his regular clothes, looking smaller without the Blade of Marmora suit on. More like himself again.

Instead, Keith says, “I’m not leaving Voltron again.” 

Somehow the words are shocking as they are unsurprising, like jumping into a cold pool and feeling the water soak into your body, Lance feeling his nerves light up one by one.

“I had a feeling,” Lance says, voice soft. “Considering you’re still here.”

“Well, I wasn’t going back to the Blade,” Keith replies. It takes a moment, but blade Keith usually had on his belt, in his hands, is nowhere to be seen. “I wasn’t going to abandon my family again.” There’s the pause then, and Keith’s looking straight at him with a longing in his eyes tears through Lance without mercy. “I wasn’t going to leave after everything you’ve done for me.”

“Don’t stay on my account.” Lance hears his own voice speak those words, but it feels as if he’s lost all control. This isn’t what he wanted to say but his brain is on autopilot, taking only what needs to be said. “if you want to still be with the Blade—“

“I don’t,” Keith cuts in, voice sharp as a blade. “I  _want_  to be here. Not for any of you…” He cringes at how it comes out, but Lance gives him the go ahead to show he understands. “I wanted to come back for me, too.” A beat. “I’m better when I’m with Voltron. When I'm with you.”

Lance understands. "So am I."

“I’m bad with words,” Keith says with a huff, almost laughing at his own words. “But I’m trying.”

“I know,” Lance replies, easy smile on his lips. “You’re doing a pretty damn good job.”

Keith smiles at him softly, reaches over and takes Lance’s in his own sweaty hands. The fact of the matter is, Lance doesn’t care about that, about anything other than squeezing his hold.

As long as they're together, they'll make it through whatever is thrown their way. No matter the hardship, they'll have each other, and that'll be enough. Even amidst a war, it's more than enough.

Cupping Keith's cheeks with the palms of his hands, Lance pulls him into a gentle kiss.

Not a goodbye kiss, but one that says  _welcome home_.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **spoilers/warning:** the minor character death is Kolivan. It's not shown on screen, except for a few mentions when Lance finds Keith among the rubble.
> 
> Please leave kudos/your thoughts! Thank you for reading ♡


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